Alix toyed with the silver on her dressing-table until he had gone, and then she swept across the room to her little writing-desk and wrote the note that Alan had found half an hour later in his rooms.
Gerry stood in the hall outside Alix’s room for a moment, hoping to hear a sob, a cry, anything for an excuse to go back. Instead he heard the scratch of a pen; but he was too troubled to deduce anything from that. He went slowly down the stairs and out into the street. The biting winter air braced him. He started to walk rapidly. At the end of an hour he found himself standing on a deserted pier. He took off his hat and let the wind cool his head.
“I have been a brute,” he said to himself. “I have made a woman cry--Alix!” He turned and walked slowly back to the avenue and into his club, but he still felt uneasy. A waiter brought a whisky and soda and put it at his elbow. Gerry turned on him.
“Who told you to bring that?” Then he felt ashamed of his petulance. “It’s all right, George,” he said more genially than he had spoken for many a day; “but I don’t want it. Take it away.”
He sat for a long time, and at last came to a resolution. Alix loved roses. He would send her enough to bank her room, and he would follow them home. He went up the avenue to his florist’s, and stood outside trying to decide whether it should be one mass of blood red or a color scheme. Suddenly the plate glass caught a reflection and threw it in his face. Gerry turned. A four-wheeler was passing. He could not see the occupant, but on top was a large, familiar trunk marked with a yellow girdle. On the trunk was a familiar label. He stared at it, and the label stared back at him, and finally danced before his mazed eyes as the cab disappeared into the traffic.
Gerry stood for a long while, stunned. He saw a lady bow to him from a carriage, and afterward he remembered that he had not bowed back. Somebody ran into him. He looked back at the flowers massed in the window, remembered that he did not need them now, and drew slowly away. Two men hailed him from the other side of the street. Gerry braced himself, nodded to them, and hailed a passing hansom. From the direction Alix’s cab had taken he knew the station for which she was bound. As he arrived on the platform they were giving the last call for the Montreal express. He caught sight of Alix hurrying through the gates, and followed. As she reached the first Pullman, somebody rapped on the window of the drawing-room. Gerry saw Alan’s face pressed against the pane. He watched Alix stop, turn, and climb the steps of the car, and then he wheeled and hurried from the station.