Part 11

"Certainly not," she said; "and now you will say good-bye--because you are going away, you say." She had stopped at the Fourth Avenue edge of the square. "So good-bye, and thank you for the beautiful dog, and for the violets."

"But you won't keep the dog, and you won't keep the violets," he said; "and, besides, if you are going north--"

"Good-bye," she repeated, smiling.

"--besides," he went on, "I would like to know where you are going."

"That," she said, "is what I do not wish to tell you--or anybody."

There was a brief silence; the charm of her bent head distracted him.

"If you won't go," she said, with caprice, "I will walk once around the square with you, but it is the silliest thing I have ever done in my entire life."

"Why won't you keep the bull-terrier?" he asked, humbly.

"Because I'm going north--for one reason."

"Couldn't you take His Highness?"

"No--that is, I could, but--I can't explain--he would distract me."

"Shall I take him back, then?"

"Why?" she demanded, surprised.

"I--only I thought if you did not care for him--" he stammered. "You see, I love the dog."

She bit her lip and bent her eyes on the ground. Again he quickened his pace to keep step with her.

"You see," he said, searching about for the right phrase, "I wanted you to have something that I could venture to offer you--er--something not valuable--er--I mean not--er--"

"Your dog is a very valuable champion; everybody knows that," she said, carelessly.

"Oh yes--he's a corker in his line; out of Empress by Ameer, you know--"

"I might manage ... to keep him ... for a while," she observed, without enthusiasm. "At all events, I shall tie my violets to his collar."

He watched her; the roar of Broadway died out in his ears; in hers it grew, increasing, louder, louder. A dim scene rose unbidden before her eyes--the high gloom of a cathedral, the great organ's first unsteady throbbing--her wedding-march! No, not that; for while she stood, coldly transfixed in centred self-absorption, she seemed to see a shapeless mass of wreaths piled in the twilight of an altar--the dreadful pomp and panoply and circumstance of death--

She raised her eyes to the man beside her; her whole being vibrated with the menace of a dirge, and in the roar of traffic around her she divined the imprisoned thunder of the organ pealing for her dead.

She turned her head sharply towards the west.

"What is it?" he asked, in the voice of a man who needs no answer to his question.

She kept her head steadily turned. Through Fifteenth Street the sun poured a red light that deepened as the mist rose from the docks. She heard the river whistles blowing; an electric light broke out through the bay haze.

It was true she was thinking of her husband--thinking of him almost desperately, distressed that already he should have become to her nothing more vital than a memory.

Unconscious of the man beside her, she stood there in the red glow, straining eyes and memory to focus both on a past that receded and seemed to dwindle to a point of utter vacancy.

Then her husband's face grew out of vacancy, so real, so living, that she started--to find herself walking slowly past the fountain with Langham at her side.

After a moment she said: "Now we have walked all around the square. Now I am going to walk home; ... and thank you ... for my walk, ... which was probably as wholesome a performance as I could have indulged in--and quite unconventional enough, even for you."