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 “I can’t stand the office any longer,” he proceeded. “I don’t know what my family will say; but I'm sure I’m right. Don’t you think so?”

“Live down here by yourself?” she asked.

“Some old woman would do for me, I suppose,” he replied. “I’m sick of the whole thing,” he went on, and opened the gate with a jerk. They began to cross the next field walking side by side.

“I tell you, Mary, it’s utter destruction, working away, day after day, at stuff that doesn’t matter a damn to any one. I’ve stood eight years of it, and I’m not going to stand it any longer. I suppose this all seems to you mad, though?”

By this time, Mary had recovered her self-control.

“No. I thought you weren’t happy,” she said.

“Why did you think that?’ he asked, with some surprise.

“Don’t you remember that morning in Lincoln’s Inn Fields?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Ralph, slackening his pace and remembering Katharine and her engagement, the purple leaves stamped into the path, the white paper radiant under the electric light, and the hopelessness which seemed to surround all these things.

“You're right, Mary,” he said, with something of an effort, “though I don’t know how you guessed it.”

She was silent, hoping that he might tell her the reason of his unhappiness, for his excuses had not deceived her.

“I was unhappy—very unhappy,” he repeated. Some six weeks separated him from that afternoon when he had sat upon the Embankment watching his visions dissolve in mist as the waters swam past and the sense of his desolation still made him shiver. He had not recovered in the least from that depression. Here was an opportunity for making himself face it, as he felt that he ought to; for, by this time, no doubt, it was only a sentimental