“I'm sure that is written to somebody,” Mary breathed.
Margaret nodded. This girl was too ravished with the grip of the thing to be capable of words.
Mary implored: “Oh, do tell me!”
Then Margaret told the story of Bill—with intimate details and in the beautiful phrases of the poet mind she told it, and the flooding emotion piled upwards to the very roof.
Love has rightly been pictured as a naked babe. Men together will examine a baby—if they must—with a bashful diffidence that pulls down the clothes each time the infant kicks; women dote upon each inch of its chubby person. And so with love. Men will discuss their love—if they must—with the most prudish decorum; women undress it.
It becomes essential, therefore, that what Margaret said to Mary must not be discovered.
When she had ceased she put out a hand for the price of her confidence: “And have you—are you—I know practically nothing about you, Mary, dear. Do tell me, are you in love?”
Bang went the gates of Mary's emotion. Here was awful danger. She laughed. “Oh, I've no time to fall in love, have I?”
Margaret sighed her sympathy; then gazed at Mary.
Mary read the gaze aright. These were women, and they read one another by knowledge of sex. Mary knew Margaret's gaze to be that of an archer sighting at his mark, estimating the chances of a hit. She saw the arrow that was to come speeding at her breast; gathered her emotions so that she should not flinch at the wound.