"But, Christina, you can't deny that you would hardly be sorry, and that you would not expect me to be sorry—only solemn."
"I should expect you to be both."
"Sorry because a man I have no affection for—a man I have almost hated—is dead?"
"Yes; if only for those reasons; and that it should be only for those reasons is what you meant when you said: 'Poor Dick,'" Christina demonstrated with an air of finality that showed her displeased with what she felt to be an unbecoming levity.
Milly was thinner, paler; Christina noticed that, though she did not notice how often she returned to the subject of her husband's danger and the irony of her own indifference to it. And Milly's listless moods followed one other so closely this winter as to become almost permanent. She was evidently bored. More and more frequently, when they were talking over their tête-à-tête tea, the very dearest hour of the day, Christina saw that Milly did not hear her. After these four years of comprehension and mutual forbearance the apparent indifference or preoccupation could not, at first, seriously disturb her; hurt her it always did. Picking up a book she would read and cease to talk. The mood always passed the sooner for not being recognised, and Milly would come out of the cloud, unaware of it, sunnier, sweeter, more responsive than before. But this winter she did not come out. That she should be so bored, so apathetic, began to disturb as well as to hurt Christina. There came a quick pulsing of fear; did some new attachment account for it? Her mind, in a swift, flame-like running around the circle of possibilities, saw them all as impossibilities, and put the fear away.
One day, taking Milly's face between her hands, yet feeling, strangely, a sudden shyness that made the complete confession of her alarms too difficult, she asked her if she were unhappy.
"Unhappy, dear Christina? Why should I be?" Milly put an affectionate arm about her friend's neck.
"But are you? Is there anything you would like to do? Anywhere you would like to go? I am sure that you are frightfully bored," Christina smiled. "Confess that you are."
"Have I seemed bored? No. I can't think of anything that would interest me. One comes on these Sahara-like times in life, you know—stretches of dull sands. Or is it that I am getting old, Christina?"
"You old? You, child!"