I could only dodge that question.
"All unhappiness is awful."
"Ah, but this! An elderly man!—in love! Madly in love! It's not natural; it's frightful; and when it's with yourself—"
She moved away from me and began to inspect the room. In spite of her agitation she did this more in detail than when she had been there before, making the round of the book-shelves much as Mr. Grainger himself was in the habit of doing, and gazing without comment on the Persian and Italian potteries. It was easy to place her as one of those women who live surrounded by beautiful things to which they pay no attention. Mr. Brokenshire's richly Italianate dwelling was to her just a house. It would have been equally just a house had it been Jacobean or Louis Quinze or in the fashion of the Brothers Adam, and she would have seen little or no difference in periods and styles. The books she now looked at were mere backs; they were bindings and titles. Since they belonged to Stacy Grainger she could look at them with soft, unseeing eyes, thinking of him. That was all. Without comment of my own I accompanied her, watching the quick, bird-like turnings of her head whenever she thought she heard a step.
"It's nice for you here," she said, when at last she gave signs of going. "I—I love it. It's so quiet—and—and safe. Nobody knows I come to—to see you."
Her stammering emboldened me to take a liberty.
"But suppose they found out?"
She was as innocent as a child as she glanced up at me and said:
"It would still be to see you. There's no harm in that."
"Even so, Mr. Brokenshire wouldn't approve of it."