So it happened that Dick followed Lucy down the back stairs and ate his
meal stealthily in the kitchen.
"I don't like you to eat here," she protested.
"I've eaten in worse places," he said, smiling at her. "And sometimes
not at all." He was immediately sorry for that, for the tears came to
her eyes.
He broke as gently as he could the news that he could not stay, but it
was a great blow to her. Her sagging chin quivered piteously, and it
took all the cheerfulness he could summon and all the promises of return
he could make to soften the shock.
"You haven't even seen Elizabeth," she said at last.
"That will have to wait until things are cleared up, Aunt Lucy."
"Won't you write her something then, Richard? She looks like a ghost
these days."
Her eyes were on him, puzzled and wistful. He met them gravely.
"I haven't the right to see her, or to write to her."
And the finality in his tone closed the discussion, that and something
very close to despair in his face.
For all his earlier hunger he ate very little, and soon after he tiptoed
up the stairs again to David's room. When he came down to the kitchen
later on he found her still there, at the table where he had left her,
her arms across it and her face buried in them. On a chair was the
suitcase she had hastily packed for him, and a roll of bills lay on the
table.
"You must take it," she insisted. "It breaks my heart to think--Dick, I
have the feeling that I am seeing you for the last time." Then for fear
she had hurt him she forced a determined smile. "Don't pay any attention
to me. David will tell you that I have said, over and over, that I'd
never see you again. And here you are!"
He was going. He had said good-bye to David and was going at once. She
accepted it with a stoicism born of many years of hail and farewell,
kissed him tenderly, let her hand linger for a moment on the rough
sleeve of his coat, and then let him out by the kitchen door into the
yard. But long after he had gone she stood in the doorway, staring
out...
In the office Doctor Reynolds was finishing a long and carefully written
letter.
"I am not good at putting myself on paper, as you know, dear heart. But
this I do know. I do not believe that real love dies. We may bury it,
so deep that it seems to be entirely dead, but some day it sends up
a shoot, and it either lives, or the business of killing it has to be
begun all over again. So when we quarrel, I always know--"