Helen smiled. 'One hardly likes her better at closer quarters, does one? She is like a gun going off every few moments.'
Althea smiled too; she no longer felt many qualms of loyalty on Miss Buckston's behalf.
Helen said no more, and the subject was still unapproached. 'And how do you like Mr. Kane?' Althea now felt herself forced to add.
She had not intended to use that casual tone, nearly the same tone that she had used for Miss Buckston. But she had a dimly apprehended and strongly felt wish not to forestall any verdict of Helen's; to make sure that Helen should have an open field for pronouncing her verdict candidly. Yet she was hardly prepared for the candour of Helen's reply, though in the shock that attended it she knew in a moment that she had brought it upon herself. One didn't question people about one's near friends in that casual tone.
'Funny little man,' said Helen.
After the shock of it—her worst suspicions confirmed—it was a deep qualm that Althea felt, a qualm in which she knew that something definite and final had happened to her; something sharp yet vague, all blurred by the balmy softness of the day, the sense of physical well-being, the beauty of green branches and bays of deep blue sky above. It was difficult to know, for a moment, just what had happened, for it was not as if she had ever definitely told herself that she intended to marry Franklin. The clearest contrast between the moment of revelation and that which had gone before lay in the fact that not until Helen spoke those idle, innocent words had she ever definitely told herself that she could never marry him. And there was a pang in the knowledge, and with it a drowsy lassitude, as of relief and certainty. The reason now was there; it gazed at her. Not that she couldn't have seen it for herself, but pity, loneliness, the craving for love had blinded her. Franklin was a funny little man, and that was why she could not marry him. And now, with the lassitude, the relief from long tension, came a feeling of cold and sickness.
Helen, baleful in her unconsciousness, had again closed her eyes. Althea looked at her, and she was aware of being angry with Helen. She was further aware that, since all was over for Franklin, she owed him something. She owed it to him at least to make clear to Helen that she didn't place him with Miss Buckston.
'Yes,' she said, 'Franklin is funny in his way. He is very quaint and original and simple; but he is a dear, too, you know.'
Helen did not open her eyes. 'I'm sure he is,' she acquiesced. Her placid acceptance of whatever interpretation of Mr. Kane Althea should choose to set before her, made Althea still angrier—with herself and with Helen.
'He is quite a noted scientist,' she went on, keeping her voice smooth, 'and has a very interesting new theory about atoms that's exciting a good deal of attention.'