"Good evening," Miss Roberts said simply, as they went out. He raised his hat.
"You know her, then!" Adeline exclaimed in the street.
"Well," he answered, "I've been going there, off and on, for a year or two, and one gets acquainted with the girls." His tone was rather petulant. With a quick, winning smile, she changed the subject, and he suspected her of being artful.
They sat in the sitting-room at Carteret street. Richard had not seen her since the dinner at the vegetarian restaurant, and these were almost the first words she addressed to him. Her voice was as tranquil as usual; but he discerned, or thought he discerned, in her manner a consciousness that she was guilty towards him, that at least she was not treating him justly.
The blow was like that of a bullet: he did not immediately feel it.
"Really?" he questioned foolishly, and then, though he knew that she would never return: "For how long are you going, and how soon?"
"Very soon, because I always do things in a hurry. I don't know for how long. It's indefinite. I have had a letter from my uncles in San Francisco, and they say I _must_ join them; they can't do without me. They are making a lot of money now, and neither of them is married.... So I suppose I must obey like a good girl. You see I have no relatives here, except Aunt Grace."
(Did she colour, or was it Richard's fancy?)
"Well, I expect I may visit Europe sometimes. It wouldn't do to give England up entirely. There are so many nice things in England,--in London especially...."
Once, in late boyhood, he had sat for an examination which he felt confident of passing. When the announcement arrived that he failed, he could not believe it, though all the time he knew it to be true. His thoughts ran monotonously: "There must be some mistake; there must be some mistake!" and like a little child in the night, he resolutely shut his eyes to keep out the darkness of the future. The same puerility marked him now. Assuming that Adeline fulfilled her intention, his existence in London promised to be tragically cheerless. But this gave him no immediate concern, because he refused to contemplate the possibility of their intimacy being severed. He had, indeed, ceased to think; somewhere at the back of the brain his thoughts lay in wait for him. For the next two hours (until he left the house) he lived mechanically, as it were, and not by volition, subsisting merely on a previously acquired momentum.