"Please don't come till thirtieth." The thirtieth--and it
was now the fifteenth! She flung back the fortnight on his
hands as if he had been an idler indifferent to dates,
instead of an active young diplomatist who, to respond to
her call, had had to hew his way through a very jungle of
engagements! "Please don't come till thirtieth." That was
all. Not the shadow of an excuse or a regret; not even the
perfunctory "have written" with which it is usual to soften
such blows. She didn't want him, and had taken the shortest
way to tell him so. Even in his first moment of
exasperation it struck him as characteristic that she should
not have padded her postponement with a fib. Certainly her
moral angles were not draped!
"If I asked her to marry me, she'd have refused in the same
language. But thank heaven I haven't!" he reflected.
These considerations, which had been with him every yard of
the way from London, reached a climax of irony as he was
drawn into the crowd on the pier. It did not soften his
feelings to remember that, but for her lack of forethought,
he might, at this harsh end of the stormy May day, have been
sitting before his club fire in London instead of shivering
in the damp human herd on the pier. Admitting the sex's
traditional right to change, she might at least have advised
him of hers by telegraphing directly to his rooms. But in
spite of their exchange of letters she had apparently failed
to note his address, and a breathless emissary had rushed
from the Embassy to pitch her telegram into his compartment
as the train was moving from the station.
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