"How can you be so light!" exclaimed Helen. "Well—let's talk trousseau." She felt that she had done her duty, that it was a waste of time to try to induce Courtney to be serious— "She never will have any sense of responsibility—or of the graver side of life." And with a clear conscience she took up trousseau and thought and talked dress steadily the rest of the afternoon, straight through until the supper gong sounded. And she asked so many questions, so much minute advice about every little detail that Courtney's attention could not wander.
At supper Courtney got a real pleasure from Helen's rapt, tenderly smiling countenance—they could not talk before Lizzie as the engagement was to be kept secret. Also, she got pleasure mingled with amusement out of Helen's delightful swift assumption of the ways of a married woman, and out of her immense satisfaction—as shown in a certain sweet and loving condescension to Courtney—over Basil's superiority as a catch. Helen was in fancy already married and installed in grandeur. But after supper, when Helen went up to write her first love letter—(those to Will Arbuthnot didn't count)—Courtney made no attempt to save herself from the attack of the blues that had been threatening ever since she calmed sufficiently to recall what she had said to Dick at the laboratory. She sat at the piano playing softly. Helen's face was haunting her—that expression telling of dreams she understood so well—so well! Would Helen's dream fade too? Probably—yes, certainly—for, the Helen sort of woman soon discouraged love in a man, and the Basil sort of man looked askance at love as tainted of that devil whom no one believed in any more yet everyone feared. Fade—wither—die. And she herself—would she seek on and on, deceived always by hopes and longings—as she had been twice already—the second time worse deceived than the first——
Into her thoughts came an image of Richard. The image grew stronger. Very gradually she realized that he was actually before her, was the tall figure in the doorway of the sitting room——
"I didn't dare interrupt," he said. "It would have been like disturbing a funeral."
"Not quite so bad as that," replied she with an attempt to smile. Though her rose-bronze coloring enabled her to blush deeply without detection, had the corner where she was sitting been less dim he must have seen into what shamefaced confusion his coming threw her.
She went on playing; he seated himself at some distance from her to gaze into the fire and smoke. She was on the grill of humiliating thoughts about herself—what she had said and done that afternoon. She did not lift her eyes until she had made sure by several furtive glances that she could look at him in safety. She watched him—the cigarette gracefully between the long first and second fingers of his hand of the aristocrat and the artist—the poise of his curiously long head so well proportioned—the long, sensitive, mobile features—that indescribable look which proclaims at a glance the man of high intelligence—the man of the finely organized nervous system. Then she observed that he was in evening half dress—one more reason for his looking unusually handsome and distinguished. But all the time she was seeing those two expressions which had transformed him that afternoon—had transformed him and had made her feel mean and poor beside him. A man who could be such a wild hot blast of primeval passion; the man who could be stronger than passion, even such passion—there was indeed a man! And what must he think of her! "But no worse than I deserve."
To break the current of her own thoughts, she interrupted his with a trivial "You are dressed this evening."
"Because I've come to call," he replied, rousing himself from his reverie.
"I'll tell Helen."
"I want to talk to you—if you'll listen." She stopped the soft wandering of her fingers over the keys. "No, go on playing, please."