Moved by a sudden impulse, Lilian leans forward, and the two women as their lips meet seal a bond of friendship that lasts them all their lives.
For some time after they have left Cecilia's bower Lilian keeps silence, then all at once she says to Cyril, in tones of the liveliest reproach:
"I wouldn't have believed it of you."
"Would you not?" replies he, somewhat startled by this extraordinary address, being plunged in meditation of his own. "You don't say so! But what is it then you can't believe?"
"I think"—with keen upbraiding—"you might have told me."
"So I should, my dear, instantly, if I only knew what it was," growing more and more bewildered. "If you don't want to bring on brain-fever, my good Lilian, you will explain what you mean."
"You must have guessed what a treat a real love-affair would be to me, who never knew a single instance of one," says Lilian, "and yet you meanly kept it from me."
"Kept what?" innocently, though he has the grace to color hotly.
"Don't be deceitful, Cyril, whatever you are. I say it was downright unkind to leave me in ignorance of the fact that all this time there was a real, unmistakable, bona fide lover near me, close to me, at my very elbow, as one might say."
"I know I am happy enough to be at your elbow just now," says Cyril, humbly, "but, to confess the truth, I never yet dared to permit myself to look upon you openly with lover's eyes. I am still at a loss to know how you discovered the all-absorbing passion that I—that any one fortunate enough to know you—must feel for you."