to find your own way home

She shut her eyes. "I will, Rain, I will! I promise I will, and soon! You're right, of course, but then you always are. I never thought I'd come to miss Drogheda, but lately I seem to be developing quite an affection for it. As if I am a part of it after all." He looked suddenly at his watch, smiled ruefully. "I'm very much afraid tonight is one of those occasions when I've used you, Herzchen. I hate to ask you to find your own way home, but in less than an hour I have to meet some very important gentlemen in a top-secret place, to which I must go in my own car, driven by the triple-A-security-clearanced Fritz." "Cloak and dagger!" she said gaily, concealing her hurt. "Now I know why those sudden taxis! 1 am to be entrusted to a cabby, but not the future of the Common Market, eh? Well, just to show you how little I need a taxi or your security-clearanced Fritz, I'm going to catch the tube home. It's quite early." His fingers lay rather limply around hers; she lifted his hand and held it against her cheek, then kissed it. "Oh, Rain, I don't know what I'd do without you!" He put the hand in his pocket, got to his feet, came round and pulled out her chair with his other hand. "I'm your friend," he said. "That's what friends are for, not to be done without." But once she parted from him, Justine went home in a ,v thoughtful mood, which turned rapidly into a depressed one. Tonight was the closest he had come to any kind of personal discussion, and the gist of it had been that he felt her mother was terribly lonely, growing old, and that she ought to go home. Visit, he had said; but she couldn't help wondering if he had actually meant stay. Which rather indicated that whatever he felt for her in the past was well and truly of the past, and he had no wish to resurrect it. It had never occurred to her before to wonder if he might regard her as a nuisance, a part of his past he would like to see buried in decent obscurity on some place like Drogheda; but maybe he did. In which case, why had he re-entered her life nine months ago? Because he felt sorry for her? Because he felt he owed her some kind of debt? Because he felt she needed some sort of push toward her mother, for Dane's sake? He had been very fond of Dane, and who knew what they had talked about during those long visits to Rome when she hadn't been present? Maybe Dane had asked him to keep an eye on her, and he was doing just that. Waited a decent interval to make sure she wouldn't show him the door, then marched back into her life to fulfill some promise made to Dane. Yes, that was very likely the answer. Certainly he was no longer in love with her. Whatever attraction she had once possessed for him must have died long since; after all, she had treated him abominably. She had only herself to blame.