pain; it would be
impossible for her to go to her friend and say:--"I have fallen in love
with my husband, and you and I must part." In that impossibility for
Milly lay her only hope. If Milly and Dick could be held apart, and by
Milly's own cowardice rather than by any word or gesture of her own, the
wretched interlude might pass and Milly come to look back upon it with
shame and amazement and to thank her friend for the strength and control
that had made escape possible.

And the first-fruits of her strategy were soon apparent. Milly saw less
and less of Dick. Dick, as of old, made no attempt to seek her out and,
obviously, it was now impossible for Milly, with Christina's quiet eyes
upon her, to seek him. Milly took up again the idea of Greece and said
that, after all, they must go that spring. They would all, she gaily
declared, go up to London and depart to their different quarters of the
globe at the same time, Dick to Africa and she and Christina to Greece.
This was said in Dick's presence and he cheerfully acquiesced. Christina
wondered if Milly had not hoped for some protest or suggestion from him.
In Dick's blindness lay, she began to see, an even greater hope than in
Milly's cowardice. Milly could not very well come to her and avow her
love for Dick when Dick, it was evident, did not dream of avowing his
for her. And Milly became aware of this as she did. Her manner towards
Dick changed. She rallied him with a touch of irritability; she scored
off him as she had used to do, by means of Christina; she put forward
Christina and her relation to Christina constantly, and seemed to taunt
him, as of old, with his own inadequacy. All her innocent gaiety was
gone; she hid her deep disquiet under an air of feverish brightness, and
poor stupid Dick, accepting Milly's alteration as he had always accepted
things from her, showed no hurt and no reproach; he merely effaced
himself, cheerfully, once more.

Christina understood it all and the breathless subterfuges in which
Milly's perturbation concealed itself. She was longing that Dick should
see what she could not show, and that he should break through the web
with an avowal. She was longing that Christina, if Dick remained blind,
should mercifully give Dick and her their chance. Christina knew the
horrible risk she ran in remaining blandly unaware, in continuing to
take Milly at her word, in keeping there, between her and Dick, where
Milly herself placed her. She might