Very slowly she moved away from him, her head still drooping.  At the door she did not pause and look back, actress-like, to try him with one more look.  She went like a wounded thing.  And at the sight, the wild impulse to rush after her and cry to her that nothing in the wide universe mattered, so that she should lift that head and lay it on his breast, gripped him and wrung him, till drops of moisture started out upon his forehead, and he turned sick.  Then she was out of sight, and he stood grasping the back of a chair, fighting for control.  This was a dinner-party—­a dinner-party!  Kind God in heaven!  And he and she must go back to those other people and smile and talk, must somehow cover it all up.  How was it conceivably to be done?

She could do it, perhaps.  After all, it could not be the soul-stirring thing to her that it was to him.  She loved him enough to be his wife—­under the old conditions.  She did not love him enough to go with him as his wife into the new conditions.  Then she could not be suffering as he was suffering.  Wounded pride—­she was feeling that, no doubt of it—­wounded pride is not a pleasant thing to feel.  She loved him somewhat, loved him enough to take the initiative in this scene to-night.  But real love—­she could not know what that was, or she would follow him to the ends of the earth.  It was the woman’s part to follow, not the man’s.  Hers to give up her preference for his duty.  Since she could not do this, she did not really love him.  This was the bitterest drop in the whole bitter cup!

Footsteps came rapidly along the corridor, Webb Atchison appeared in the doorway.  At the first sound of his return Brown had wheeled and was found standing before a cabinet, in which behind glass doors was kept a choice collection of curios from all parts of the world.  He was trying to summon words to explain that he was looking for a certain loving-cup—­a loving-cup—­when one had just been presented, full to overflowing, to his thirsty lips, and he had refused to drink!

But Atchison was full of his message.

“Don, I’ve done my best to put the fellow off, but he will see you.  Hang it!—­to-night of all nights!  I don’t know why that following of yours should pursue you to this place.  I suspect it will be considerable of a jolt to that chap to see you in an expanse of white shirt-front.  But it seems somebody has been taken worse since you left, and insists on seeing you.  Why in thunder did you leave an address for them to find you at?”

By the time Atchison had delivered himself of all this Brown had hold of himself, could turn and speak naturally.  The news had been like a dash of cold water in the face of a fainting man.

“Who is worse—­Mr. Benson?”

“Think that was the name—­an old man.  The messenger’s waiting, though I told him you certainly couldn’t go back to-night.”

“I certainly shall go back to-night.  Where is he?”