She didn't want "Doody" and "Pucketts." She didn't want even "Nibbetts," who, it was clear to him, was usually her help in time of trouble. What chance then was there that she would see him?
But to his surprise and that of the doctor as well, she did.
Her maid came back with Dodson and took him to the room. And there, in the half dark made by the drawn window-curtains he saw her lying in the wide, white bed, her beauty hidden--or was it her hideousness--by swathing white cloths.
She looked curiously Eastern and uncanny, and his thoughts crowded, and he was dumb.
But she held out her right hand to him and said: "So nice to see you! But--what is this I hear they are telling about us? Such astounding tales."
Then he knew that Rosamond had made no secret of his daring speech and that the doors and windows of gossip were all set open afresh.
He sat down in a chair close by her side and took the hand she offered, and held it close to his own.
"I have been telling the truth," he said, with that cool, odd courage which leaps like a well-trained servant to do the bidding of some men. "It is only a few days as time is counted, but clocks should be our slaves instead of our masters. To me it seems an eternity since you so gave me back to myself that I"--he faltered ever so slightly--"could love--yes, really and truly--love again. And I do. Oh, Nina, I do! Just you--only you."
Then, all at once, he remembered, and looked sharply about the room. He had forgotten the maid. He had not thought of Cecile Archdeacon. They might be there, somewhere, curtained by the gloom.
"Don't be alarmed," Nina said, amused. "There is no one but I to hear your confession. Cecile withdrew discreetly before you came, and my maid parted from you on the other side of the door."
"But you have said openly here, in this house, that we are engaged--that I had your ring."
For a breath he hesitated. Then: "Let it stand," he pleaded, and bent toward her. "You are like me, you are sick of it all. The world has bruised us both--has tried to make outcasts of us both--has blackened us falsely.
"Let us go away together--to Yukon, to Ceylon, to where you will. Let us build for ourselves a free life--a new, clean life, out in those free, new clean surroundings."