Their eyes, smiling, quizzical, yet sad, watched, measured each other, while they exchanged these trophies from the past. He had joined her beside the fire, and, turning, she leaned her hands on the mantel and looked into the flames. So looking, her face had its aspect of almost tragic brooding. It was as if, Gavan thought, under the light memories, all those visions of his night were there before her, as if, astonishingly, and in almost uncanny measure, she shared them.
“And do you remember Robbie?” she asked presently.
“I was just thinking of Robbie,” Gavan answered. It was her face that had brought back the old sorrow, and that memory, more than any, linked them over all that was new and strange. They glanced at each other.
“I am so glad,” said Eppie.
“Because I remember?”
“Yes, that you haven’t forgotten. You said you would.”
“Did I?” he asked, though he quite remembered that, too.
“Yes; and I should have felt Robbie more dead if you had forgotten him.”
This was wonderfully not the Miss Gifford, and wonderfully the old Eppie. She saw that thought, too, answering it with, “Things haven’t really changed so much, have they? It’s all so very near—all of that.”
So near, that its sudden sharing was making Gavan a little uncomfortable, with the discomfort of the night before justified, intensified.