With a grave and graceful movement she kissed the tip of her slim, fine fingers and waved them in the direction of her niece.
Then she appeared to detect suddenly the presence of her other hand, still grasping the little table, and drew it away with an air of surprised melancholy.
"Aha!" said Aunt Clo, half playfully, half sadly. "That is the first time, is it not, that you have seen me in need of extraneous support? That is not like me."
She slowly nodded, two or three times, as though considering so new an aspect of herself, and then drew herself up to her full, stately height as she left the room. Lily felt that she herself had been somehow found remiss.
Comment, at least, had been expected of her, and she had been utterly unable to offer any.
She wondered uneasily if it were the measure of her own childishness, that Aunt Clo's story should merely have left her feeling uncomfortably bewildered, and anxiously conscious that her father would have been sincerely shocked by it.
Lily speculated as to what she should do if Nicholas Aubray were suddenly to discover himself as a married man. She indulged in an agreeable vision of his impassionate declaration, her own heart-broken renunciation of him, and their eternal farewell. After a long, long illness she would face life once more—her hair would be prematurely whitened. She, too, would tell some young, untried soul the story of her own experience....
Lily had formulated one or two very beautiful sentences when she became aware that she was thoroughly enjoying herself. The discovery scandalized her sincerely.
These things were serious—they constituted reality, and here she was playing a kind of game with them!
Lily felt profoundly dissatisfied with herself and her own inability to regard as sacred the many things that her upbringing had taught her should be classified under that traditional heading of Philip's. It bewildered her to find that Nicholas himself, although his ardour touched and pleased her in a strange, exciting way, did not awaken in her any of the emotions that she had always associated with the dawn of love.