She forgot all about the message when she saw Eric.
'You here?' she said.
There was no reason why he shouldn't be here, in his sister's room. She had just received that letter from Wyatt Edgell, and she was wondering how she should answer it, and the sight of Eric seemed to bring a feeling of relief to her mind.
'Oh, I have been wanting to see you so much!' she said eagerly; she was so afraid Pamela would come in and interrupt them. 'I want to know—how—how Mr. Edgell is going on—if—if anything has happened since——'
Eric understood what she meant, though she spoke incoherently; and he understood her agitation and reluctance.
'No,' he said slowly, looking at her with a strange pity in his eyes, 'nothing has happened in that way, thank God! He is working hard; I am afraid too hard.'
'Oh, I don't think work will hurt him!' she said scornfully. She remembered how the girls worked here. What the men called 'work' was only play to them. She wasn't at all afraid that her lover would work as hard as Pamela, for instance.
'I don't mean that,' he said; 'I'm not afraid of his breaking down. I'm only afraid that when the strain is over—he—he will feel it—he——'
He was a very awkward young man; he could only stand there stammering and stuttering, while the girl looked at him with dilating eyes.
'You mean,' she said with a shiver, 'that when the strain is over he will go back to his old way—that he will not be able to withstand——'