eir
friends, many of them dear friends, but dear on a certain level, below
the illuminated solitude where they two stood in their precious
isolation. And Milly protested to herself that she was the last person
to wish that isolation disturbed. No one knew her, understood her,
helped and loved her as Christina did; there was no one like Christina,
no one so strong, so generous, so large-natured. Why then should
Christina, like a foolish school-girl, show unmistakably--her efforts to
hide it only making her look dim-eyed, white-lipped--a sombre misery if
Milly allowed anyone to absorb her? This really piteous infirmity was
latent in Christina; she did not show it at all during the first years
of their companionship; it grew with her growing devotion to Milly.
Milly discovered it when she asked little Joan Ashby to go to Italy with
them. Christina, at the proposal, had been all glad, frank acquiescence.
Unsuspectingly Milly petted and made much of the girl whose adoration
was sweet to her. She went about with her sight-seeing, when Christina
said that she was tired and did not care to see things, not remembering
that when they were alone together Christina had never seemed tired. She
laughed and talked till all hours of the night with Joan, when Christina
had gone to bed saying that she was sleepy. All had seemed peaceful and
normal. Milly was stupefied when, by degrees, a consciousness of a
difference in Christina crept upon her.

Christina smiled much, was alert, crisply responsive; but ice was in the
smile, the response was galvanized. She was suffering--the realization
rushed upon Milly once her innocent eyes were opened, and all her
strength went to hiding the suffering. Milly, watching, felt a helpless
alarm, really a shyness, gaining upon her in the face of this
development. She found Christina sobbing in her room one night when she
cut short her talk with Joan and came upon her unexpectedly.

Milly's tender heart rose at a bound over alarm and shyness. But when
she ran to her, Christina pushed her fiercely away. "You know! Of course
you know! Go back to her if you like her better!"

She was like a frantic child. Milly could have laughed, had not the
exhibition in her grave, staunch Christina frightened her too much,
made her too terribly sorry and almost ashamed for her.

Later, when Christina, laughing quiveringly at her own folly, yet
confessing her own powerlessness before it, put her arms around her neck
an