sure you can realize. Anyway, for the moment argument with her would be futile. Besides, she has gone from town.”
“Gone?”
“Yes, she left for Newport today. If I were you I would not attempt to follow. But I will write. I will tell her what you say, and I will tell you her reply.”
Orr stood up. As he did so Annandale sat down. He cared for Sylvia Waldron, absolutely, uniquely. He felt, too, that she had cared for him. But while Orr had been speaking he told himself that her caring had ceased. Had any affection remained she could not have gone. It was his fault, though. He had shocked it out of existence. At the thought of that he felt unutterably miserable. What he felt he looked.
Orr saw his dejection. “Annandale,” he said, “I hardly suppose that it will console you now to have me tell you that nothing earthly is of any consequence, but, if you let the idea permeate you, ultimately perhaps it may. By the way, that is a new man you have, isn’t it?”
In the wreckage amid which Annandale was floundering the question was like a rope; he caught at it and swam up.
“Who? Harris? Yes, the other poor devil I had was run over and died in an ambulance.”
Orr tapped at his foot with his stick. “I may be in error,” he said, “but I think I have seen him before.”
“Then it must have been in London. He has been here only a short time. He tells me he used to be with Catty.”
Catty was a relative of Annandale, a New York girl who had married the Duke of Kincardine.