"Oh," said Lily.
She remained speechless, even after Miss Dickenson had three times asked what made her say it like that.
"It sounded so weird," remarked Doris distrustfully, in conclusion.
But the sense of irony that occasionally sustained Lily was not always at her command. She regained her strength very slowly, and had no great desire to be well again.
Her relations with Nicholas were in a curiously fluid state. His presence, after enduring that of Doris Dickenson all day, always brought to her a rush of relief and pleasure, and often his companionship appeared to her as almost a perfect thing. The revulsion of feeling was proportionately painful when words of his, casually and kindly spoken, from time to time forced upon her an unwelcome realization of the gulf that mentally separated them.
They would never agree about people.
Lily, shamefacedly admitting the immense importance to herself of the personal equation in life, yet tried to blame herself for regarding the difference between them as being an important one. Sometimes, even, in her weakness and youthfulness, she tried to deny its existence.
Her husband's cult for Doris Dickenson, however, Lily unaffectedly welcomed. Incomprehensible though it seemed to her that Miss Dickenson's company should afford aught but weariness to anybody, she was glad that Nicholas should not have a solitary breakfast and dinner.
He always disliked being alone, unless when he was busy, and Lily felt vaguely that her prolonged stay upstairs would be partly compensated for if she could provide other companionship for him.
She was glad to remember that Nicholas had always liked Aunt Clo.