This letter filled Sophy with rebellious anger, yet at the same time she realised that it had to be considered seriously. The most painful part of all was that she felt that she must speak about it to Amaldi. Despite all her natural independence, she could not defy conventionality to the extent of allowing their friendship to give rise to such odious gossip. And she thought how strange and almost tragic it was, that the only breath of scandal that had ever touched her should be caused by the one perfectly clear, passionless affection of her life.
She told him of the letter as they walked in the beech wood beyond the garden.
"It's only what we might have foreseen in this crowded, narrow-minded place!" she ended bitterly.
Amaldi, who was stripping the fronds of a dead leaf that he had picked up, kept his eyes on it. He did not say anything for a second or two, then he observed in that level, withheld voice that she knew meant intense feeling:
"I'm afraid we might have expected it in any place."
"Oh, Amaldi!—no!" she exclaimed indignantly.
"I'm afraid so," he repeated.
They were seated now on a felled log. Through the incessant quivering of the nervous leaves they could see the gleam of the pond sunk in wreaths of loose-strife—the "long purples" of Ophelia's garland. It was all white and blue with the August sky. Except for the sound of blowing leaves the wood was very still. This stillness seemed to make it all more embarrassing and hateful somehow. Sophy sat chin on hand, staring at the shining pond. Other things that must be put into words were impossible to utter just then.
Amaldi broke the silence.
"I suppose," he said in that expressionless voice, "that we shall have to stop seeing each other—for the present at least."