thing you would like to do? Anywhere you
would like to go? I am sure that you are frightfully bored," Christina
smiled. "Confess that you are."

"Have I seemed bored? No. I can't think of anything that would interest
me. One comes on these Sahara-like times in life, you know--stretches of
dull sands. Or is it that I am getting old, Christina?"

"You old? You, child!"

"I feel old," said Milly. "Really old and tired."

Christina still smiled at her, but smiled over a sudden choking in her
throat. It was not sympathy for her friend's _Weltschmertz_; it was the
recognition of something in her eyes, her voice--something she could not
analyze, as if a faint barrier wavered, impalpable, formless, between
them, and as if, did she say that it was there, it would change suddenly
to stone and perhaps shut her out for ever.

What was it in Milly that made her afraid that to cry out her fears
might make them permanent? She battled with them all the winter. They
had arranged to go to Sicily and Greece for the spring, and Christina
looked forward to this trip as a definite goal. It would break the
spell, turn the difficult corner,--for all her fierce idealism she was
too wise a woman not to know that every human relation must have
corners; and, indeed, in talking over plans, getting up information,
burnishing historical memories, Milly showed some of her old girlish
eagerness. She and Christina even read the Greek tragedies over
together, in order, Milly said, that they should steep themselves in the
proper atmosphere. It was therefore with a shock of bitter surprise and
disappointment that Christina, only a fortnight before the time fixed
for their departure, heard Milly announce, with evident openness, though
she flushed slightly, that she thought she would rather put off the
trip; she would rather spend April at Chawlton; and, at once going on,
looking clearly at her friend: "You see, dear, I have just had a letter
from Dick. He gets back next week and is going down there. He says that
he wants to see the primroses after that horrid Africa;--quite a
poetical touch, isn't it,--for Dick! And I think it would be really a
little too brutal of me, wouldn't it, if I sailed off without seeing him
at all--without pouring out his tea for even one week."

Milly was smiling, really with her own soft gaiety; the flush had gone.
Christina was convinced of her own misinterpretation. Duty had called
Milly away from pleasure, and she had fe