She thought this over for a little while. “Wasn’t it natural?” she said at last. “She knew how I should feel it.”
“In what way feel it?”
“She knew that until then I had not really believed him still existing,” said Antonia, with her cold, downcast face. “Not as she believed it; not even as you did. She knew what it must mean.”
“That when you really believed, it must part us?”
“Not only that. Perhaps that, alone, would not have parted us. But that he should come back.”
Still she did not look at him, and he continued to limp up and down, his eyes, also, downcast. He, too, was seeing Malcolm standing there, beside the fountain, as he had seen him when first Antonia had told him of her fear. He had visualized her thoughts on that first day; and though, while they sat at the table, he had not remembered Tony’s fear, it had doubtless been its doubled image that had printed itself from their minds upon Miss Latimer’s clairvoyant brain. But now, seeing his dead friend, as he always thought of him, the whole and happy creature, a painful memory suddenly assailed him, challenging this peaceful picture of Malcolm’s ghost; and he was aware, as it came, as he dwelt on it, of a stir of hope, a tightening of craft, in his veins and along his nerves. Subtlety, after all, might serve better than flesh and blood. This, he was sure, was a memory not till then recalled at Wyndwards; and it might strangely help him.
“Tony, how was Malcolm dressed when she saw him?” he asked.
“In his uniform.” He had avoided looking at her in asking his question, but he heard from her voice that she suspected nothing. “As he must have been when he was killed.”
As he must have been when he was killed. Tony had played into his hands.
“Bareheaded, or with his cap?”