"Well?"
"You are so changed."
She broke into a peal, a silvery peal, of laughter.
"So you have noticed it? We wondered whether you would. Mother thought you would, but I said you wouldn't. And Gerald had a bet with father about it and he's won, so he'll have to take us all to a theatre. Come and tell them about it."
Roland followed her in amazement. The change in her was so unexpected. He had always looked on her as a little girl whom he had teased and played with, and now, suddenly, in a night, she had grown up into a daughter of that other world of which he had caught fleeting, enticing glimpses at restaurants and theatres. He watched her as she laughed and talked, unable to realise that this was the little girl with whom he had played last summer. And yet to him she was unaltered. She offered him the same frank comradeship. She took him for a walk after tea and spoke with real enthusiasm of his success.
"I can't say how glad I am, Roland. I was so awfully anxious for you to come off. I was so afraid something might go wrong. I think it's wonderful of you."
Her words thrilled him. It was something to win the admiration of a girl like Muriel. April was naturally impressed by his achievements. Of course it would be wonderful to her that he should visit great cities and dabble in high finance. It was like a fairy story that had come true. But Muriel had spent all her life in that world. She had travelled; her parents were rich. She was accustomed to the jargon of finance. It would have been a feat for him, a newcomer to that world, to have proved himself able to move comfortably there, but to have impressed her with his achievements ... and when she began to ask him how he had manœuvred those big interviews his flattered vanity could not allow him to hold his secret.
"But I've told no one," he said, "not even my people."
"That's all the more reason why you should tell me."
"Will you promise to keep it a secret?"