before sending him back to
school; but he once caught her looking at him as though she understood.
. . . His father had roused from an age-long scholar's dream to remember
a friend who was now a professor at Columbia University. Sybil was as
much excited as if she had been going in his place. . . . He would never
see any of them again, after they had been everything to him all these
years! And he was sneaking away without telling them that he would never
come back.

"You'll send us a cable to say that you've arrived safely," Lady Lane
was saying.

Eric promised quickly and harked back to the letters of introduction.
After trying for so long not to think of Barbara, he found that he must
not think of his own family. They were still expecting him back in
April, "when the weather's a bit more settled."

"I only wish you weren't going so soon," said his mother regretfully.
"Geoff's due for leave next month."

"Tell him I was sorry to miss him," Eric answered. "I'm afraid the boat
won't wait for me."

He walked back with them to their hotel and said good-bye in the hall,
explaining that he was unlikely to see them next day. He had promised to
lunch with Manders and to dine with the Poynters; and, though either
engagement might have been cancelled, he could not screw himself up to a
second parting.

It was curious to feel, as he walked home, that he was beginning the
last day of his life in London. Only once more would he unlock the
street door and enter the dimly-lit hall which Barbara had invaded
fifteen months before. . . . In the morning he bade awkward farewell to
his secretary. On his way to luncheon he paused on the steps of the
Thespian, trying to see it as a club and not as one of many places where
Barbara had telephoned to him. . . . Manders, of course, insisted on a
champagne luncheon to wish him Godspeed; at intervals he asked how long
the tour was to be; and Eric wondered whether a suicide or a condemned
man went through this recurrent sense of parting, recurrently spiced
with surprise. He would never sit in the oak-panelled dining-room again,
never see Manders again. . . .

Throughout the ritual of the day he could not grow accustomed to saying
good-bye. It was all so familiar; he never persuaded himself that
everything was over. By an error of judgement he was several minutes
late in reaching Belgrave Square, as when first he dined there. Lady
Poynter protested that she had given up hope of him. Her hu