Dodo turned to leave the room.
"Anywhere will do. Just under the stairs," she said. "I don't want to put it in the middle of the drawing-room. After all, darling, you propose to jilt him."
"There's something in that," said Nadine. "Oh, Mama, I used not to have any heart at all, and now that I've got one it doesn't belong to me."
"No woman's heart belongs to her," said Dodo. "If it belongs to her, it isn't a heart."
"I should have thought that nonsense yesterday," said Nadine. "Oh, wait while I finish dressing; I shan't be ten minutes. What meetings we have had in my lovely back room! One, I remember so particularly. You and Esther and Berts all lay on my bed like sardines in evening dresses, and I had just refused to marry Hugh, who was playing billiards with Uncle Algie. Somehow the things like love and devotion seemed to me quite old-fashioned, or anyhow they seemed to me signs of age. They did, indeed. I thought a clear brain was infinitely preferable to a confused heart, especially if it belonged to somebody else. I'm not used to it, Mama: it still seems to me very odd like a hat that doesn't fit. But it's a fact, and I suppose I shall grow into it, not that any one ever grew into a hat. But when Hugh swam out yesterday morning, something came tumbling down inside me. Or was it that only something cracked, like the shell of a nut? It does not much matter, so long as it is not mended again. But how queer that it should happen in a second, like that. I suppose time has nothing to do with what concerns one's soul. I believe Plato says something about it. I don't think I shall look it up. He wrote wonderfully, but when a thing happens to oneself, that seems to matter more than Plato's reflections on the subject."
There was a short pause as Nadine brushed her teeth, but Dodo sitting on the unslept-in bed did not feel inclined to break it. She wondered whether a particular point in the situation would occur to Nadine, whether her illumination as regards a woman's heart threw any light on that very different affair, a man's heart. She was not left long in doubt. The question of a man's heart was altogether unilluminated, and to Dodo there was something poignantly pathetic about Nadine's blissful ignorance. She came and sat down on the bed close to her mother.
"Hughie will see I love him," she said, "because he won't be able to help it. I shall just wait, oh, so happily, for him to say again what he has so often said before. He will know my answer, before I give it him. I hope he will say it soon. Then we shall be engaged, and people who are engaged are a little freer, aren't they, Mama?"
Dodo felt incapable of clouding that radiant face, for she knew in the days that were coming, all its radiance would be needed: not a single sparkle of light must be wasted. But it did not seem to her very likely that Hugh, whose joyous strength and splendid activity had been so often rejected by Nadine, would be likely to offer to her again what would be, in all probability, but a crippled parody of himself. But her sense of justice told her that Nadine owed him all the strength and encouragement her eager vitality could give him. It was only fair that she should devote herself to him, and let him feel all the inspiration to live that her care of him could give him. But it seemed to her very doubtful if Hugh would consent, even if he perceived that it was love not warm friendship that she gave him, to let himself and his crippled body appeal to her. In days gone by, she would not marry him for love, and it seemed to Dodo that a real man, as Hugh was, would not allow her to marry him for pity. He had offered her his best, and she had refused it; it would not be surprising if he refused to offer her his worst. The joy that had inspired Dodo so that she had softly melted over the sight of Nadine asleep by Hugh, and had exultantly mopped up the spilt ink with Edith, suddenly evaporated, leaving her dry and cold.
"You must wait, Nadine," she said. "You must make no plans. Give Hughie your vitality, and don't ask more."
She got up.