'As to being near in a week—she doesn't feel near you; that is all I mean. Don't cast your pearls too lavishly.'
Althea made no reply, but under her air of unruffled calm, Aunt Julia's shaft rankled.
She found herself that afternoon, when she and Helen were alone at tea, sounding her, probing her, for reassuring symptoms of warmth or affection. 'I so hope that we may keep really in touch with one another,' she said. 'I couldn't bear not to keep in touch with you, Helen.'
Helen looked at her with the look, vague, kind, and a little puzzled, that seemed to plant Aunt Julia's shaft anew. 'Keep in touch,' she repeated. 'Of course. You'll be coming to England some day, and then you'll be sure to look me up, won't you?'
'But, until I do come, we will write? You will write to me a great deal?'
'Oh, my dear, I do so hate writing. I never have anything to say in a letter. Let us exchange postcards, when our doings require it.'
'Postcards!' Althea could not repress a disconsolate note. 'How can I tell from postcards what you are thinking and feeling?'
'You may always take it for granted that I'm doing very little of either,' said Helen, smiling.
Althea was silent for a moment, and then, with a distress apparent in voice and face, she said: 'I can't bear you to say that.'
Helen still smiled, but she was evidently at a loss. She added some milk to her tea and took a slice of bread and butter before saying, more kindly, yet more lightly than before: 'You mustn't judge me by yourself. I'm not a bit thoughtful, you know, or warm-hearted and intellectual, like you. I just rub along. I'm sure you'll not find it worth while keeping in touch with me.'