Air Ticket Read Online Free Page A

was so unlike her, Caro, to do a thing like that, and so far a l l that she had got for her impulsive breakaway was a sore leg and an uneasy feeling that she might have been wiser to stay at home.
    She did not hear the tap on the door when it came, and Dr. Andreas was actually standing in the room when she turned and saw him. He prevented her from getting up by striding out onto the balcony, and she thought he looked at her rather keenly.
    “I’m sorry if you’ve any objection to my coming up to your room, but I regard you as a patient for the time being, and you had no right at all to leave the clinic without my permission. How are you feeling?”
    “Quite all right, thank you,” she returned.
    “You said that yesterday and then promptly disproved it by passing out altogether. ”
    “I was afraid I was going to be sick,” she confessed.
    “Now tell me truthfully, how do you feel?”
    She thought for a moment.
    “A little stiff—my leg, I mean—and inclined to wonder why I came to Switzerland at all !”
    “And why did you?” He put out a hand and felt her pulse, and the touch of his fingers struck her as pleasant. “You’ve told me already that you were running away, but so far I’ve been unable to get out of you exactly what you were running away from.”
    “Oh, only myself,” she told him, and looked down strangely at Beverley’s letter lying in her lap. “Myself—and loneliness.” She touched the letter when he released her wrist. “I’ve just heard from my daughter in Italy. She’s having a wonderful honeymoon!”
    “Well, honeymoons should be wonderful,” he agreed, lying back lazily in his chair and studying her. “How old is your daughter?”
    “Only nineteen. It seems terribly young to be married.”
    “Yet you were married at eighteen.”
    “Yes. But I still think it’s much too young—one should be older.”
    “Oh, why?” he asked, as if he were interested.
    “One doesn’t feel enough at that age—at least, I don’t think so. Although some people develop early, of course—”
    “But you were a late developer?”
    “I ... I don’t know.”
    “You’re looking very somber,” Dr. Andreas remarked, leaning toward her. “Was yours an unhappy marriage?”
    “Oh, no—oh, no!” she denied quickly. “It was not that. But it was all over so soon.” And then, as he continued to look at her as if expecting her to go on, she told him a little of how she had always felt about that sudden and dreadful end to it all. “It seemed ... all wrong, somehow,” she ended. “Such a waste!”
    His eyes did not exactly express sympathy, but the way in which he continued to watch her became almost embarrassing.
    “You were certainly very young to live through an ordeal like that,” he observed. “But at least you were never desperately in love.”
    Her eyes widened, but she did not answer this, and she thought his face had become much graver.
    “And your daughter,” he went on, smiling suddenly, “is apparently very much in love!”
    “Yes,” she agreed with him slowly, “and David, her husband, is terribly nice. But the thing that frightens me is the thought of how much I’m going to miss her. She’s been all I’ve had all these years. With her and my work I’ve managed to be quite happy.”
    “In a negative way,” he remarked.
    “Well, no, not really negative—in fact, it was a happiness that was quite positive sometimes!” She smiled at him. “Especially when things were not too easy—it’s always fun to have to fight, you know!”
    “And you have had to fight? What sort of pictures do you paint?”
    “I paint miniatures,” she admitted, but she was too modest to add that they were such exquisite miniatures that for the past year or so orders for them had reached her from people who had been able to pay her great sums of money.
    “And that’s why you have to wear glasses,” Dr. Andreas remarked, “because so much application has strained your eyes.” He