"Tell me two things more," she said, with a tremor in her voice. "Do you shrink from me? And the wrong I have done to--to your unborn child, what of that?"
Lily rose and kissed her on the forehead.
Kit got up, hands trembling and with twitching mouth.
"Let me go," she said. "Let me go at once. Come if I send for you."
She hurried from the room without further good-bye, and Lily was too wise to try to detain her. Her carriage was still waiting, and she stepped quickly into it.
Outside the air was brisk with spring, the streets clean and dry, and populous with alert faces. Shop-windows winked and sparkled in the lemon-coloured sunshine; at a corner was a barrow full of primroses from the country, and the news of the day lay on the cobbles of the crossing, with stones to keep it from flying, in scarlet advertisement. A shouting wind swept down Piccadilly, hats flapped and struggled, errand-boys whistled and chaffed, buses towered and nodded, hansoms jingled and passed, but for once Kit was blind to this splendid spectacle of life. Her own brougham moved noiselessly and swiftly on its India-rubber tires, and she knew only, and that with a blank heaviness of spirit, that each beat of the horses' hoofs brought her a pace nearer to her home, to her husband--a step closer to what she was going to do.
She got out at her own door, and, to her question whether her husband was in, was told that he was up in his room. He had ordered the carriage, however, which brought her back, to wait, as he was going out.
Kit went quickly up the staircase and along the parquetted floor of the passage, not loitering for fear she should not go at all. Jack was standing in front of his fireplace, an opened letter in his hand. As she came in he looked up.
Kit had advanced a few steps into the room, but stopped there, looking at him with eyes of mute entreaty. She had not stopped to think over what she should say, and though her lips moved she could not speak.
Kit did not reply, but her eyes dropped before his.
"What is the matter?" he asked again. "Are you ill, Kit?"
Then the inward storm broke. She half ran across the room and flung her arms round his neck.
"I wish I were dead!" she cried. "Jack, Jack--oh, Jack!"