After luncheon, when the Waldos and Masons became absorbed for a few minutes in talk, she turned a look on her husband. "I saw the tickets," she said.
"Did you?" he returned, pretending--as she thought--not to understand.
"Of course. Did you think I wouldn't? That would have been poor economy in the game we've been playing."
It was her turn to show that she was puzzled. "What do you mean?"
"You never cared to talk things over. I saw you didn't want to, so I didn't press. And when this complication about the Waldos came up, I thought--perhaps I was mistaken--that you--trusted me to do the best I could."
"Yes. That's why I expected you not to get me a ticket to Texas."
"That's just it. Neither did I know. I got the whole ticket, so you might choose your stopping-place."
"Oh!" Annesley was ashamed, though she was sure she had no need to be. "That was why!"
"That was why. Things being as they are, it was well I had your ticket to show with mine, wasn't it?"
"We'll talk of that in the train. There won't be time before, because of these people, and because I must leave you for two hours before the train goes."
"Leave me!" Annesley echoed the words blankly, then hoped that he had not noticed the dismay in her tone.
"You will be all right with the Waldos and their friends. I'll explain to them. There's no time to lose. I must go off at once."
Annesley was pricked with curiosity to know why and where he must go. She would not ask. But while he was away and she was being whirled through the park and along Riverside Drive at lightning speed, "to see New York in a hurry," her thoughts were with her husband, imagining fantastic things.
"My mind is like a ghost," she thought, bitterly, "haunting what once it loved. It seems doomed to follow wherever he goes, whatever he does. But it will be different when we're parted. I shall escape in soul and body. I shall have my own life to live."
"That wonderful Italian house," Mrs. Waldo was saying, as the taxi slowed down for one of her lectures, "is Paul Van Vreck's New York home. They say it's a museum from garret to cellar (not that there _is_ a garret!), and I believe it's a copy of some palazzo in Venice. It's shut up now; perhaps he's in Florida, or Egypt, where he--but look, somebody's coming out--why, Mrs. Nelson Smith, it's your _husband_! Shall we stop----"