ngly trivial
words.

"Did you expect me?" he asked.

"Of course I expected you. I thought you saw how much," said Milly.

"I didn't think you expected me at all; why should I have thought it?
But I did come. Didn't you know it?" said Dick.

"You did come?" In its extremity her astonishment was mild.

"That is to say--I never got there. Mrs. Drent met me. She told me how
you'd gone to sleep, you know. She thought you'd gone to sleep, Milly.
She didn't know you expected me either, you see. It was in the park we
talked, just there by the rhododendrons."

"She told you I had gone to sleep?--But why did that keep you from
coming?" Milly had suddenly risen to her feet. She had grown pale.

"Why--it was obvious--you wouldn't want to be disturbed. She said that.
And--everything else. She told me--for I confided in her then--she'd
always been so kind to me; and I thought she might help me--but she told
me how little you cared for me."

Milly had grasped his shoulder as she stood above him. "What did
Christina tell you? What did she say about me? Let me understand."

"Why, Milly--what is it?--She told me--I didn't blame you, though it
hurt, most unconscionably--because I'd always believed that, in spite of
everything, you had some sort of kindly feeling for me--as though I'd
been a well-intentioned dog who didn't mean to get in your way--she told
me that I mustn't have any hopes. And she told me that that very winter
you had said to her that you'd feel my death less than that of any of
the men who came to tea with you. Yes, she told me so, Milly--and wasn't
it true?"

Milly now looked away from him and round at the room, stupor on her
face. "Yes, it was true I said it," she said in the voice of a
sleep-walker. "Yes; I said it, Dick. But it was so long ago. How did she
remember?--And I knew when I said it that it wasn't true."

"But she thought it was true." Dick now had risen, and he, too, very
pale, looked at his wife.

"Yes; then, she may have thought it. I wanted her to think it because I
did not want her to guess how much I was getting to care. But,
afterwards--after you had come back--she did not think it then. She
knew, then, everything. She knew before I did. It was she who showed it
to me.--Oh, Dick!--She knew that I loved you--and she kept you from
coming to me!" She was gazing at him now, stupefied, horrified, yet
enraptured. It was of him she thought, her lover, her husband, rather
than of the unhappy wo