‘I was lonely,’ he said bluntly. And after a pause he added, ‘I got all yours.’
‘I’m so glad.’ And then another pause. In which fashion they talked on for half an hour, each secretly estimating the other—wondering a little why they did not feel all kind of poignant emotions they had rather expected to feel.
It was a perfectly natural scene between a brother and sister who had grown up entirely apart, who were quite honest, who were utterly different types, and who yet wished to hold to one another as the nearest blood ties they possessed. They skimmed pleasantly and, so far as he was concerned, more and more easily, over the surface of things. Her talk, like her letters, was sincere, simple, shallow; it concealed no hidden depths, he felt at once. And by degrees, even in this first conversation, crept a shadow of other things, so that he realised they were in reality leagues apart, and could never have anything much in common below the pleasant surface relations of life.
Yet, even while he sheered off, as oil declines from its very nature to mingle with water, he felt genuinely drawn to her in another way. She was his own sister; she was his nearest tie; and she was Dick’s widow. They would get along together all right; they would be good friends.
‘Twenty years, Margaret.’
‘Twenty years, Paul.’
And then another pause of several minutes during which something that was too vague to be a real thought passed like a shadow through his mind. What could his friend Dick have seen in her that was necessary to his life and happiness—Dick Messenger, who was scholar, poet, thinker—who sought the everlasting things—God? He instantly suppressed it as unworthy, something of which he was ashamed, but not before it had left a definite little trace in his imagination.
‘So at last, Paul, you’ve really come home,’ she resumed; ‘I can hardly believe it,—and are going to settle down. You are a rich man.’
‘Aunt Alice did her duty,’ he laughed. He ignored the reference to settling down. It vaguely displeased him. ‘It’s for you as well as me,’ he added, meaning the money. ‘I want to share with you whatever you need.’
‘Not a penny,’ she said quickly; ‘I have all I need. I live with my memories, you know. I am only so glad for your sake,—after all your hard life out there.’