"The family wants to know," pleaded Harry.
"Lilian—are you really...."
Her hands closed over the letter which she had just read. She turned her head away and pretended to be busy at the coffee-pot. They were all joking among themselves, and they did not notice the tears glisten in her eyes.
"There's nothing to tell," she said, in a hard voice.
"Oh, we don't believe that!" Harry said. "Young ladies wot gets letters in masculiferous handwritings every morning...."
She rose abruptly and looked at the clock. Then—wonderful Lilian!—she laughed and threw them all off the scent. "You children are too talkative," she said, with pretended loftiness. "I mustn't stop chattering with you or I shall miss the eight-forty." She put on her gloves with precision, and took up her little handbag, and adjusted her hat, just as if nothing had happened to disturb the ordinary course of her life; and, then, with the usual kiss all round, she let herself out of the house.
Oh, she kept herself well in hand throughout the journey to town—nobody knew, and nobody must know. It was only a secret between herself and her heart. She looked out with dry eyes over the dismal plain of chimney-pots with which the train ran level, the cowls spinning in the wind ... the chimney-pots stretched row upon row, far away, until, with a hint of the open sea, adventure and wide freedom, the masts and rigging and brown sails arose from the ships lying in the docks. But when she came to the office she rushed upstairs, and in the little room where they hung their cloaks and hats, all her pent-up emotions broke loose with a torrent of tears. She wanted to empty her eyes of tears so that there should be none left, and she wept without control, silently, until she could weep no more. It was just like a short, sharp storm on a day that is oppressive and heavy; the air is all the cooler and sweeter for it, fresh breezes play gently over the streets, the world itself seems eased after its outburst.
She could smile again. She bathed her red eyes in the cold water of the basin, and performed some magic with a powder-puff. Nobody would have guessed, as she sat tap-tapping at her typewriter, with the sunshine touching her hair with its golden fingers, that a thunderstorm had shaken her nature a few minutes earlier. It was all over now; only the letter remained, and she knew the letter by heart, she had read it so often.
A difficult letter to write! Well, not really, for that which comes from the heart is easy to write. It is insincerity which presents difficulties, and in this business Humphrey had not been insincere. He had not made any cold calculations as to the future; he had not weighed the pros and cons of it all. After the letter was written and posted, the vision of her reproachful face haunted his dreams, and he felt that he had lost something irretrievable—something of himself that had gone from him, never to return.