Would she never bicycle? Katherine, wheeling lightly erect beside him, gave the little shake of the head and shrug of the shoulders characteristic of her. She evidently found no fault with Hilda. Others might do so—the shrug implied that, implied as well that Katherine herself perhaps owned that her sister’s impracticable unreason gave grounds for fault-finding—but Hilda was near her heart.
When could he see her? That, too, seemed wrapped in the general cloud of vagueness, unaccountableness that surrounded Hilda. Odd called twice in the evening; once to be received by Katherine alone, Hilda was already in dèshabille it seemed, and once to find not even Katherine; she was dining out, and Miss Hilda in bed. In bed at nine! “Was she ill?” he asked of Taylor. Wilson had evidently accompanied the Captain.
“No wonder if she were, sir,” Taylor had replied, with a touch of the grievance in her tone that Hilda always seemed to arouse in those about her; “but no, she’s only that tired!” and Odd departed with a deepened sense of Hilda’s wilful immolation. Katherine brought him home to lunch on several occasions after the bicycling, but Hilda was never there. She lunched at her studio.
On a third call Hilda appeared, but only as he was on the point of going. She wore the same black dress, and the same look of unnatural pallor.
“Hilda,” said Odd, for amid these unfamiliar conditions he still used the familiar appellation, “I must see the cause of all this.”
“Of what?” Her smile was certainly the sweet smile he remembered.
“Of this unearthly devotion; these white cheeks.”
“Hilda is naturally pale,” put in Mrs Archinard; “she has my skin. But, of course, now she is a ghost.”
“Well, I want to see the haunted studio. I want to see the masterpieces.” Odd spoke with a touch of gentle irony that did not seem to offend Hilda.
“You will see nothing either uncanny or unusual.”