Passionate repudiation of the debasement for Milly swept through the stricken friend and mingled with the throes of her anguish for herself. For how was she to live without Milly? How could she live as Milly's formal friend, kept outside the circle of intimate affection, the circle where, till now, she had reigned alone? Ah! she understood Milly's nature too well; she saw that with all its sweetness it was slight. Love, with her, would efface all friendships. Like a delicate, narrow little vase, her heart could hold but one deep feeling. She would come, simply, not to care for Christina at all. Would come? Had she not come already? In her eyes, her smiles, the empty caressing of her voice, was there not already the most profound indifference? And all the forces of Christina's nature rose in rebellion. She felt the rebellion like the onslaught of angels of light against powers of darkness; it was the ideal doing battle with some primal, instinctive force. She must fight for Milly and for herself. For she, too, had her claim. She measured herself beside Dick Quentyn, her needs beside his. His life was cheerful, contented, complete; hers without Milly would be a warped, a meaningless, a broken life. Strangely, her thoughts, in all their anguish, turned in not one reproach upon her friend; rather, her comprehension, from maternal heights of love, sorrowed over her with infinite tenderness. For, so she told herself, she could have resigned her, in spite of her own bereavement, to true companionship, true fulfilment. But Milly—her Milly—made hers by all these years—in love with Dick Quentyn! It was a calamity, a disease which had befallen her darling. Asking no heights, this love would lead her down to contented levels, and Milly's life, too, in all true senses, would be warped and meaningless and broken.
Meanwhile, in the library, Dick said to his wife: "An't I interrupting you? Don't you read or talk or do something with Mrs. Drent at this time of the day?"
And at the question alone, contentedly alone with him as she was, dimly enlightened, too, by Christina's guarded glance, Milly made a swift, surprised survey of the situation. She did not want to talk to Christina; she wanted to go on talking to Dick. She had not as yet realized that Christina's presence had become an interruption, a burden; Christina's personality had seemed blurred, merely, and far away. She was now aware of this, aware, for the first time, of something to hide from Christina, and a sense of awkwardness and almost of confusion came upon her.
"Oh no, you are not interrupting us. Christina and I will have heaps of time for talking and reading when you are gone," she said, smiling and blushing faintly.
Dick, even more unconscious than she of its meaning, gazed at the blush, and then they went on with their talk about crocodiles.
When Christina saw Milly again that evening, it was evident to her that Milly had at last become aware of something changed, and that her own composure urged Milly into a self-protecting overdemonstrativeness. She was completely composed. She stood aside, mild, unemphatic, unaware, seeming not to see, making no effort to hold; and as her desperate dread thus instinctively armed her, she saw that no other attitude could have been so efficacious. When she stood aside, Milly was forced to draw her in; when she pretended to see nothing, Milly must pretend—to her and to Dick—that there was nothing to see. Milly was afraid of her; that became apparent to her during the ensuing days, terrible, lovely days of spring, when, as if with drawn breath and cold, measuring eye, she crossed an abyss on a narrow plank laid above the emptiness. Milly was afraid; of her scorn and incredulity, perhaps; perhaps only of her pain. Milly was cowardly in her shrinking from giving pain; it would be impossible for her to go to her friend and say:—"I have fallen in love with my husband, and you and I must part." In that impossibility for Milly lay her only hope. If Milly and Dick could be held apart, and by Milly's own cowardice rather than by any word or gesture of her own, the wretched interlude might pass and Milly come to look back upon it with shame and amazement and to thank her friend for the strength and control that had made escape possible.
And the first-fruits of her strategy were soon apparent. Milly saw less and less of Dick. Dick, as of old, made no attempt to seek her out and, obviously, it was now impossible for Milly, with Christina's quiet eyes upon her, to seek him. Milly took up again the idea of Greece and said that, after all, they must go that spring. They would all, she gaily declared, go up to London and depart to their different quarters of the globe at the same time, Dick to Africa and she and Christina to Greece. This was said in Dick's presence and he cheerfully acquiesced. Christina wondered if Milly had not hoped for some protest or suggestion from him. In Dick's blindness lay, she began to see, an even greater hope than in Milly's cowardice. Milly could not very well come to her and avow her love for Dick when Dick, it was evident, did not dream of avowing his for her. And Milly became aware of this as she did. Her manner towards Dick changed. She rallied him with a touch of irritability; she scored off him as she had used to do, by means of Christina; she put forward Christina and her relation to Christina constantly, and seemed to taunt him, as of old, with his own inadequacy. All her innocent gaiety was gone; she hid her deep disquiet under an air of feverish brightness, and poor stupid Dick, accepting Milly's alteration as he had always accepted things from her, showed no hurt and no reproach; he merely effaced himself, cheerfully, once more.
Christina understood it all and the breathless subterfuges in which Milly's perturbation concealed itself. She was longing that Dick should see what she could not show, and that he should break through the web with an avowal. She was longing that Christina, if Dick remained blind, should mercifully give Dick and her their chance. Christina knew the horrible risk she ran in remaining blandly unaware, in continuing to take Milly at her word, in keeping there, between her and Dick, where Milly herself placed her. She might part them, but Milly might come to hate her.
Milly's plan was carried out: they all went up to town together, Milly to her friend's house, Dick to his bachelor's chambers. And it was Christina who asked Dick to come and dine with them the night before he left for Africa. She maintained every appearance. The very air that night was electric with the restraints ready to burst into reverberations which would surprise no one but Dick. Christina herself was aware of a strange little dart of impatience with him. His stupidity helped her as nothing else could have helped; yet, while she blessed it, she could feel for Milly, and actually, while she blessed, resent it. It was true that she read in his eyes a slight shyness as they rested upon his wife. He was bewildered, and it was evident he was not happy. And Milly had dropped her shield of flippancy. She sat silent, absent, absorbed, looking up at her husband now and then, with curious eyes, eyes cold and deep and suffering. Christina saw it all. Should she leave them now, it was inevitable that the revelation would come, and it would come from Milly. Mutely, in their respective unconsciousness and consciousness, they were begging her to go; and she sat on. Her inflexible determination upheld her over the terrible falsity of her position. Milly, now, must know that she knew; yet she sat on, smiling, talking, until the hour was late.
Then, as Dick rose, it was Milly who went towards the barrier that she herself had raised and showed Dick that it had an unlocked gate. From her deep knowledge of Milly's nature, Christina could gauge, with a dreadful accuracy, what the strength of the feeling must be that could nerve her, rising and sauntering to the door beside him, to say in a strange, in a nonchalant voice: "How about a walk in the park to-morrow, Dick? You don't go till the evening, do you?"