rrowed over her with
infinite tenderness. For, so she told herself, she could have resigned
her, in spite of her own bereavement, to true companionship, true
fulfilment. But Milly--her Milly--made hers by all these years--in love
with Dick Quentyn! It was a calamity, a disease which had befallen her
darling. Asking no heights, this love would lead her down to contented
levels, and Milly's life, too, in all true senses, would be warped and
meaningless and broken.

Meanwhile, in the library, Dick said to his wife: "An't I interrupting
you? Don't you read or talk or do something with Mrs. Drent at this time
of the day?"

And at the question alone, contentedly alone with him as she was, dimly
enlightened, too, by Christina's guarded glance, Milly made a swift,
surprised survey of the situation. She did not want to talk to
Christina; she wanted to go on talking to Dick. She had not as yet
realized that Christina's presence had become an interruption, a burden;
Christina's personality had seemed blurred, merely, and far away. She
was now aware of this, aware, for the first time, of something to hide
from Christina, and a sense of awkwardness and almost of confusion came
upon her.

"Oh no, you are not interrupting us. Christina and I will have heaps of
time for talking and reading when you are gone," she said, smiling and
blushing faintly.

Dick, even more unconscious than she of its meaning, gazed at the blush,
and then they went on with their talk about crocodiles.

When Christina saw Milly again that evening, it was evident to her that
Milly had at last become aware of something changed, and that her own
composure urged Milly into a self-protecting overdemonstrativeness. She
was completely composed. She stood aside, mild, unemphatic, unaware,
seeming not to see, making no effort to hold; and as her desperate dread
thus instinctively armed her, she saw that no other attitude could have
been so efficacious. When she stood aside, Milly was forced to draw her
in; when she pretended to see nothing, Milly must pretend--to her and to
Dick--that there was nothing to see. Milly was afraid of her; that
became apparent to her during the ensuing days, terrible, lovely days of
spring, when, as if with drawn breath and cold, measuring eye, she
crossed an abyss on a narrow plank laid above the emptiness. Milly was
afraid; of her scorn and incredulity, perhaps; perhaps only of her pain.
Milly was cowardly in her shrinking from giving