" Walker, what time is it?"
"Twenty-two minutes past, Madam."
As he spoke, a door opened and Mr Foster came into the hall. He stood for a moment, looking intently at his wife, and she looked back at him-at this diminutive but still quite dapper old man with the huge bearded face that bore such an astonishing resemblance to those old photographs of Andrew Carnegie.
"Well," he said, "I suppose perhaps we'd better get going fairly soon if you want to catch that plane."
"Yes, dear-yes! Everything's ready. The car's waiting."
"That's good, he said. With his head over to one side, he was watching her closely. He had a peculiar way of cocking the head and then moving it in a series of small, rapid jerks. Because of this and because he was clasping his hands up high in front of him, near the chest, he was somehow like a squirrel standing there-a quick clever old squirrel from the Park.
"Here's Walker with your coat, dear. Put it on."
"I'll be with you in a moment," he said. "I'm just going to wash my hands."
She waited for him, and the tall butler stood beside her, holding the coat and the hat.
" Walker, will I miss it?"
"No, Madam," the butler said. "I think you'll make it all right."
Then Mr Foster appeared again, and the butler helped him on with his coat. Mrs Foster hurried outside and got into the hired Cadillac. Her husband came after her, but he walked down the steps of the house slowly, pausing halfway to observe the sky and to sniff the cold morning air.
"It looks a bit foggy," he said as he sat down beside her in the car. "And it's always worse out there at the airport. I shouldn't be surprised if the flight's cancelled already."
"Don't say that, dear-please."
They didn't speak again until the car had crossed over the river to Long Island.
"I arranged everything with the servants," Mr Foster said. "They're all going off today. I gave them half-pay for six weeks and told Walker I'd send him a telegram when we wanted them back."
"Yes," she said. "He told me."
"I'll move into the club tonight. It'll be a nice change staying at the club."
"Yes, dear. I'll write to you."
"I'll call in at the house occasionally to see that everything's all right and to pick up the mail."
"But don't you really think Walker should stay there all the time to look after things?" she asked meekly.
"Nonsense. It's quite unnecessary. And anyway, I'd have to pay him full wages."
"Oh yes," she said. "Of course."
"What's more, you never know what people get up to when they're left alone in a house," Mr Foster announced, and with that he took out a cigar and, after snipping off the end with a silver cutter, lit it with a gold lighter.
She sat still in the car with her hands clasped together tight under the rug.
"Will you write to me?" she asked.
"I'll see," he said. "But I doubt it. You know I don't hold with letter-writing unless there's something specific to say."
"Yes, dear, I know. So don't you bother."
They drove on, along Queen's Boulevard, and as they approached the flat marshland on which Idlewild is built, the fog began to thicken and the car had to slow down.
"Oh dear!" cried Mrs Foster. "I'm sure I'm going to miss it now! What time is it?"
"Stop fussing," the old man said. "It doesn't matter anyway. It's bound to be cancelled now. They never fly in this sort of weather. I don't know why you bothered to come out."
She couldn't be sure, but it seemed to her that there was suddenly a new note in his voice, and she turned to look at him. It was difficult to observe any change in his expression under all that hair. The mouth was what counted. She wished, as she had so often before, that she could see the mouth clearly. The eyes never showed anything except when he was in a rage.
"Of course," he went on, "if by any chance it does go, then I agree with you-you'll be certain to miss it now. Why don't you resign yourself to that?"
She turned away and peered through the window at the fog. It seemed to be getting thicker as they went along, and now she could only just make out the edge of the road and the margin of grassland beyond it. She knew that her husband was still looking at her. She glanced at him again, and this time she noticed with a kind of honor that he was staring intently at the little place in the corner of her left eye where she could feel the muscle twitching.
"Won't you?" he said.
"Won't I what?"
"Be sure to miss it now if it goes. We can't drive fast in this muck."
He didn't speak to her any more after that. The car crawled on and on. The driver had a yellow lamp directed on to the edge of the road, and this helped him to keep going. Other lights, some white and some yellow, kept coming out of the fog towards them, and there was an especially bright one that followed close behind them all the time.
Suddenly, the driver stopped the car.
"There!" Mr Foster cried. "We're stuck. I knew it."
"No, sir," the driver said, turning round. "We made it. This is the airport."
Without a word, Mrs Foster jumped out and hurried through the main entrance into the building. There was a mass of people inside, mostly disconsolate passengers standing around the ticket counters. She pushed her way through and spoke to the clerk.
"Yes," he said. "Your flight is temporarily postponed. But please don't go away. We're expecting this weather to clear any moment."
She went back to her husband who was still sitting in the car and told him the news. "But don't you wait, dear," she said. "There's no sense in that."
"I won't," he answered. "So long as the driver can get me back. Can you get me back, driver?"
"I think so," the man said.
"Is the luggage out?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good-bye, dear," Mrs Foster said, leaning into the car and giving her husband a small kiss on the coarse grey fur of his cheek.
"Good-bye," he answered. "Have a good trip."
The car drove off, and Mrs Foster was left alone.
The rest of the day was a sort of nightmare for her. She sat for hour after hour on a bench, as close to the airline counter as possible, and every thirty minutes or so she would get up and ask the clerk if the situation had changed. She always received the same reply-that she must continue to wait, because the fog might blow away at any moment. It wasn't until after six in the evening that the loudspeakers finally announced that the flight had been postponed until eleven o'clock the next morning.
Mrs Foster didn't quite know what to do when she heard this news. She stayed sitting on her bench for at least another half-hour, wondering, in a tired, hazy sort of way, where she might go to spend the night. She hated to leave the airport. She didn't wish to see her husband. She was terrified that in one way or another he would eventually manage to prevent her from getting to France. She would have liked to remain just where she was, sitting on the bench the whole night through. That would be the safest. But she was already exhausted, and it didn't take her long to realize that this was a ridiculous thing for a elderly lady to do. So in the end she went to a phone and called the house.
Her husband, who was on the point of leaving for the club, answered it himself. She told him the news, and asked whether the servants were still there.