“I’ve always thought that Val needed a greater outlet for her energies than she gets here. She’s very strong, really, and she did splendidly in France when she was working so hard at her Canteen. I wish she could go away and work again.”
“Really?”
“Don’t you think so yourself?”
“Perhaps—if she wished it very much. There are other things besides work, though,” said Owen Quentillian.
“Well—” Lucilla’s favourite monosyllable held, as usual, a sound of concession.
“Couldn’t one do anything for her—take care of her, somehow?”
“I will order a cup of beef-tea for her at eleven o’clock,” said Lucilla with seriousness, but with amusement lurking in her eyes.
They parted upon a mutual smile of excellent understanding.
Quentillian thought that he liked Lucilla, with her impersonal calm, and her unquestioning acceptances.
He wrote to Valeria from London, letters that he felt to be self-conscious, and received uneloquent replies. He had left St. Gwenllian a fortnight when he finally composed an epistle that left him a little—a very little—less than profoundly dissatisfied with his own powers of composition. He received her reply by return of post.