Page:Middle Aged Love Stories (IA middleagedlove00bacorich).djvu/211



“Yes,” he said simply. “She will feel freer in that way. You will know as I should not, directly, if there is any chance. I can talk about it with you more easily—somehow.”

She shrugged her shoulders with a strange air of exhaustion; it was the yielding of one too tired to argue.

“Very well,” she breathed, “go now, and I will ask her. Come this evening. You will excuse—”

She made a vague motion. The colonel pitied her tremendously in a blind way. Was it all this to lose a daughter? How she loved her!

“Perhaps to-morrow morning,” he suggested, but she shook her head vehemently.

“No, to-night, to-night!” she cried. “Lady will know directly. Come tonight!”

He went out a little depressed. Already a tiny cloud hung between them. Suppose their pleasant waters had been