She had appeared startled at his announcement, but her face was soft as he finished. "Oh, yes, we're friends," she said. "I'm so glad you've told me, Harry. Do you know I've wondered sometimes whether there was somebody. You so often look—well, you look like I feel. You're enjoying yourself, but there's somebody you're thinking of all the time who isn't there. Do tell me about it."
He told her about his meeting with Viola on the moor, and how they had seen one another constantly afterwards and loved one another. Sidney's eyes were kind as she listened, but there was a little frown of puzzlement on her face. It was to be supposed that she wanted to "place" this lovely girl who had come to Harry as a revelation when he had been only a boy, and whom he adored still. He had told her nothing about her so far, except that her father was an artist and they had been holiday-making at Royd. There were many questions she wanted to ask.
"Have you got a photograph of her, Harry?" was the first that she asked. She wanted to satisfy herself that he was not idealizing somebody not worthy of him.
Half unwillingly he took his case out of his pocket, and Viola's photograph out of it. "It isn't as beautiful as she is," he said, "but it's like her in some ways."
Sidney took the card and looked at it for a long time. It was of Viola as Harry had first known her, young and sweet and untroubled.
"She's very lovely," she said, slowly. Then she looked up at him with a smile. "I'm so glad, Harry. I shouldn't like to think of you in love with somebody who wasn't like that. But I think she'd have to be, for you to fall in love with her. Have you seen her since?"
Yes, he had seen her two or three times before he had been sent abroad, and he had been with her since he had come back, before he had come to Royd. She was in London, working in a government office. He was going to London for a few days before his leave was up, and would see her again after that before he went to France.
He spoke as if he was troubled about it, and she knew why. But there was a lot to learn about it yet. And there was something about the beginnings of this love affair that she could not quite reconcile with her knowledge of Harry.
"Of course you're both frightfully young," she said. "Noel and I are of an age to get married if they'd let us, but I suppose you could hardly expect them to think that you were. But mightn't they accept your engagement, and let her be here with you?"
He came and sat on the seat beside her again. "Of course we shall be married some day," he said. "But we never thought about that, or about what you call an engagement—I mean we didn't think of it in the way that older people would. We were just happy loving each other."