t to begin with:
when you went away you didn't let me know; not even a word--not a
line--"

Her manner persisted in being inconsequent. "Why, no," she said. "I just
trotted off for some visits."

"Well, at least you might have--"

"Why, no," she said again briskly. "Don't you remember, George? We'd had
a grand quarrel, and didn't speak to each other all the way home from a
long, long drive! So, as we couldn't play together like good children,
of course it was plain that we oughtn't to play at all."

"Play!" he cried.

"Yes. What I mean is that we'd come to the point where it was time to
quit playing--well, what we were playing."

"At being lovers, you mean, don't you?"

"Something like that," she said lightly. "For us two, playing at being
lovers was just the same as playing at cross-purposes. I had all the
purposes, and that gave you all the crossness: things weren't getting
along at all. It was absurd!"

"Well, have it your own way," he said. "It needn't have been absurd."

"No, it couldn't help but be!" she informed him cheerfully. "The way I
am and the way you are, it couldn't ever be anything else. So what was
the use?"

"I don't know," he sighed, and his sigh was abysmal. "But what I wanted
to tell you is this: when you went away, you didn't let me know and
didn't care how or when I heard it, but I'm not like that with you. This
time, I'm going away. That's what I wanted to tell you. I'm going away
tomorrow night--indefinitely."

She nodded sunnily. "That's nice for you. I hope you'll have ever so
jolly a time, George."

"I don't expect to have a particularly jolly time."

"Well, then," she laughed, "if I were you I don't think I'd go."

It seemed impossible to impress this distracting creature, to make her
serious. "Lucy," he said desperately, "this is our last walk together."

"Evidently!" she said, "if you're going away tomorrow night."

"Lucy--this may be the last time I'll see you--ever--ever in my life."

At that she looked at him quickly, across her shoulder, but she smiled
as brightly as before, and with the same cordial inconsequence: "Oh, I
can hardly think that!" she said. "And of course I'd be awfully sorry to
think it. You're not moving away, are you, to live?"

"No."

"And even if you were, of course you'd be coming back to visit your
relatives every now and then."

"I don't know when I'm coming back. Mother and I are starting to-morrow
night for a trip around the world."