Madge arrested the hand that was pouring out her tea.
“Ah, you dear,” she said, “and all these days I never thought of it, or thanked you.”
The spout of the teapot poured a clear amber stream on to the table-cloth.
“And I have spilt the tea, too,” said Madge. “But I do thank you, and—and I am frightened!”
“No; but they are going to take the bandages off, and what shall I see? Will you be there, too, and help me not to mind if it is dreadful? You see—you see, I suppose I loved his face as well, why not, and if all that is terribly changed.... They have told me it will be. And he must not guess that I mind, that I even see it is different. And when his hands tell him what has happened, as they will, I must still convince him somehow that to me there is no difference. Oh, I want help!” she cried. “Indeed it is not only for me, I want it for him—I must convince him that it does not matter.”
But at this point Lady Dover failed a little. She was not, in spite of her obvious kindness and sympathy, quite human enough to go to the depths that Madge’s gropings reached blind hands to. The trials and difficulties that came within her ken, the loss of someone loved, the parching of love in what had been a fountain, she could have understood, but the fear of a maimed face affecting love she could not quite grasp. Her idea of love may perhaps have been spiritually finer, it may also perhaps have not been adequately human.
There was a pause, anyhow, and since nothing but immediate and spontaneous reply was conceivable from Madge’s point of view, she took up her letter again.
“This, too,” she said, “it is from Philip.”
But to that Lady Dover responded instantly.