Publisher's Synopsis
"Unexpected obstacle. Please don't come till thirtieth. Anna."All the way from Charing Cross to Dover the train had hammered the words of the telegram intoGeorge Darrow's ears, ringing every change of irony on its commonplace syllables: rattling them outlike a discharge of musketry, letting them, one by one, drip slowly and coldly into his brain, orshaking, tossing, transposing them like the dice in some game of the gods of malice; and now, as heemerged from his compartment at the pier, and stood facing the wind-swept platform and the angrysea beyond, they leapt out at him as if from the crest of the waves, stung and blinded him with afresh fury of derision."Unexpected obstacle. Please don't come till thirtieth. Anna."She had put him off at the very last moment, and for the second time: put him off with all hersweet reasonableness, and for one of her usual "good" reasons-he was certain that this reason, likethe other, (the visit of her husband's uncle's widow) would be "good"! But it was that very certaintywhich chilled him. The fact of her dealing so reasonably with their case shed an ironic light on theidea that there had been any exceptional warmth in the greeting she had given him after their twelveyears apart.They had found each other again, in London, some three months previously, at a dinner at theAmerican Embassy, and when she had caught sight of him her smile had been like a red rose pinnedon her widow's mourning. He still felt the throb of surprise with which, among the stereotyped facesof the season's diners, he had come upon her unexpected face, with the dark hair banded abovegrave eyes; eyes in which he had recognized every little curve and shadow as he would haverecognized, after half a life-time, the details of a room he had played in as a child. And as, in theplumed starred crowd, she had stood out for him, slender, secluded and different, so he had felt, theinstant their glances met, that he as sharply detached himself for her. All that and more her smilehad said; had said not merely "I remember," but "I remember just what you remember"; almost, indeed, as though her memory had aided his, her glance flung back on their recaptured moment itsmorning brightness. Certainly, when their distracted Ambassadress-with the cry: "Oh, you knowMrs. Leath? That's perfect, for General Farnham has failed me"-had waved them together for themarch to the dining-room, Darrow had felt a slight pressure of the arm on his, a pressure faintly butunmistakably emphasizing the exclamation: "Isn't it wonderful?-In London-in the season-in amob?"Little enough, on the part of most women; but it was a sign of Mrs. Leath's quality that everymovement, every syllable, told with her. Even in the old days, as an intent grave-eyed girl, she hadseldom misplaced her light strokes; and Darrow, on meeting her again, had immediately felt howmuch finer and surer an instrument of expression she had become.
