She gripped his arm. "Don't go like this! Whatever it is, don't run away.
Is it very bad? Is it--" the word that stood for the worst business
misfortune she could imagine, trembled and died on her lips--"is it
_Failure_?"

He pulled his muffler about his face, his hat lower upon his brow: "You've
hit it," he said. "It's that."

Her hand slid from his coat-sleeve, he slipped through the half-open door,
and shuffled down the three white steps which led to the silent street.
Then, as white, half-stupefied, she watched him, he turned and climbed the
steps again and stood beside her.

"You had better go to George Boult," he said. "Boult will tell you what to
do. Are you listening? Go to Boult."

"But aren't you coming back to-morrow, William? You can't leave us like
this! You must come back!"

He was going down the steps again. There was a moon clear in a frosty sky.
How white the steps shone! For all her life she remembered the big,
unwieldy figure of her husband shuffling down them.

"I don't know what my movements may be. Just at present they are
uncertain." Arrived on the pavement he turned his miserable, furtive eyes
on her as she stood in the open door, the brightly-lit hall of home behind
her. "Shut the door," he said with something of his old passionate
irritability of manner. "I don't want all the world to know I'm going away
to-night. Shut the door!"