The Breaking Point - Page 43/275

"I was reading Gibbon's 'Rome,'" she informed him. "I think every one

should know it. Don't you?"

"Good heavens, what for?" he inquired.

"I don't know." They looked at each other, and suddenly they laughed.

"I wanted to improve my mind," she explained. "I felt, last night, that

you-that you know so many things, and that I was frightfully stupid."

"Do you mean to say," he asked, aghast, "that I--! Great Scott!"

Settled in the living-room, they got back rather quickly to their status

of the night before, and he was moved to confession.

"I didn't really intend to wait until to-morrow," he said. "I got up

with the full intention of coming here to-day, if I did it over the

wreck of my practice. At eleven o'clock this morning I held up a

consultation ten minutes to go to Yardsleys and buy a tie, for this

express purpose. Perhaps you have noticed it already."

"I have indeed. It's a wonderful tie."

"Neat but not gaudy, eh?" He grinned at her, happily. "You know, you

might steer me a bit about my ties. I have the taste of an African

savage. I nearly bought a purple one, with red stripes. And Aunt Lucy

thinks I should wear white lawn, like David!"

They talked, those small, highly significant nothings which are only the

barrier behind which go on the eager questionings and unspoken answers

of youth and love. They had known each other for years, had exchanged

the same give and take of neighborhood talk when they met as now. To-day

nothing was changed, and everything.

Then, out of a clear sky, he said: "I may be going away before long, Elizabeth."

He was watching her intently. She had a singular feeling that behind

this, as behind everything that afternoon, was something not spoken.

Something that related to her. Perhaps it was because of his tone.

"You don't mean-not to stay?"

"No. I want to go back to Wyoming. Where I was born. Only for a few

weeks."

And in that "only for a few weeks" there lay some of the unspoken

things. That he would miss her and come back quickly to her. That she

would miss him, and that subconsciously he knew it. And behind that,

too, a promise. He would come back to her.

"Only for a few weeks," he repeated. "I thought perhaps, if you wouldn't

mind my writing to you, now and then--I write a rotten hand, you know.

Most medical men do."