'It's all rather queer when one comes to think of it,' said Helen. 'Althea, my new friend—whom I told you of here, only a few months ago—and her friend. How important they have become to us, and how little, last summer, we could have dreamed of it.' She, too, was speaking artificially, and was aware of it; but she was well aware that Gerald didn't find that she looked silly. She had every advantage over the friend who came with his pretended calm and his badly hidden rancour. And since he stood silent, looking at the fire, she added, mildly and cheerfully: 'I am so glad for your happiness, Gerald, and I hope that you are glad for mine.'
He looked up at her now, and she could not read the look; it hid something—or else it sought for something hidden; and in its oddity—which reminded her of a blind animal dazedly seeking its path—it so nearly touched her that, with a revulsion from any hint of weakening pity for him, it made her bitterness against him greater than before.
'I'm afraid I can't say I'm glad, Helen,' he replied. 'I'm too amazed, still, to feel anything except'—he seemed to grope for a word and then to give it up—'amazement.'
'I was surprised myself,' said Helen. 'I had not much hope left of anything so fortunate happening to me.'
'You feel it, then, so fortunate?'
'Don't you think that it is—to marry millions,' Helen asked, smiling, 'and to have found such a good man to care for me?'
'I think it is he who is fortunate,' said Gerald, after a moment.
'Thank you; perhaps we both are fortunate.'
Once more there was a long silence and then, suddenly, Gerald flung away, thrusting his hands in his pockets and stopping before the window, his back turned to her. 'I can't stand this,' he declared.
'What can't you stand?'