"You never were. It's more to the point for me to ask you to forgive me."
"For what, pray?" She had to control a quiver in her voice.
"Oh—for everything—for being so wrong, so altogether the wrong person, you know," said Dick, smiling too. He again looked away from her, across the room, now, at Christina; and, after a silence, filled for Milly with perplexing impulses, he added: "But the real reason I like her so much is that she is so tremendously fond of you."
Milly had to bring her thoughts back with an effort to Christina; she must let his remark about being forgiven remain as casual as he had evidently felt it; and it was something else that he had said which more emphatically held her attention. She thought of it all the evening, after he had gone; and, while her hair was being brushed, she looked at her reflection in the mirror and saw herself in that time, "long ago." It was as if Dick had shown her a dead thing, and had turned the key on it with his quiet words of acquiescence.
She looked in the mirror. Surrounded by the softly falling radiance of her hair, her face was still girlish in tint and outline; but already her eyes had in them the depth of time lived through, her cheeks and lips were differently sweet; and as the realization of time's swift passage stole upon her, a vague, strong protest filled her, a sense of deep, irremediable disappointment with life.
Dick Quentyn went that winter to Africa, and Milly gave her husband a farewell all kindness and composure, when he came to bid Christina and her good-bye. Composure was a habit, and she was unaware of a new discontent and protest that stirred beneath it, though aware that the kindness she felt for her husband was greater than what her words of farewell expressed.
Dick always wrote punctually, once a fortnight, to his wife, short bulletins, to which, as accurately and as laconically, she responded. This winter the bulletins were often delayed, sometimes altogether missing.
Dick had joined an exploring party, and his allusions, by the way, to "Narrow shaves," "Nasty rows with natives," and "A rather beastly fever," explained these irregularities.
"He really ought to write a book about it. They have evidently been in danger, and had an heroic time of it altogether," Christina said, during a sympathetic perusal of these documents which were always handed on to her, as, for any intimacy they contained, they might have been handed on to anybody. They began—"Dear Milly"; and ended—"Yours aff'ly, D. Q." The "affectionately" was always abbreviated.
"I suppose they really are in a good deal of danger," said Milly, nibbling at her toast,—they were at breakfast.