“I’m as sure as I can be of anything, that I shall come back.”
“Yes! Well! Twentieth of July!”
He looked at her so strangely.
Yet he really wanted her to go. That was so curious. He wanted her to go, positively, to have her little adventures and perhaps come home pregnant, and all that. At the same time, he was afraid of her going.
She was quivering, watching her real opportunity for leaving him altogether, waiting till the time, herself, himself, should be ripe.
She sat and talked to the keeper of her going abroad.
“And then when I come back,” she said, “I can tell Clifford I must leave him. And you and I can go away. They never need even know it is you. We can go to another country, shall we? To Africa or Australia. Shall we?”
She was quite thrilled by her plan.
“You’ve never been to the Colonies, have you?” he asked her.
“No! Have you?”
“I’ve been in India, and South Africa, and Egypt.”
“Why shouldn’t we go to South Africa?”
“We might!” he said slowly.
“Or don’t you want to?” she asked.
“I don’t care. I don’t much care what I do.”
“Doesn’t it make you happy? Why not? We shan’t be poor. I have about six hundred a year, I wrote and asked. It’s not much, but it’s enough,