“I told you how I felt about it just now,” Helen reminded her. “Your going is like a great black cloud that I have seen growing larger and larger, day by day. I think that, in his way, Dick will suffer just as much as Henry. We shall all be utterly miserable.”
“Why don't you try and persuade me not to go, then?” Philippa demanded. “You sit there talking about it as though I were going on an ordinary country-house visit.”
Helen raised her head, and Philippa saw that her eyes were filled with tears.
“Philippa dear,” she said, “if I thought that all the tears that were ever shed, all the words that were ever dragged from one's heart, could have any real effect, I'd go on my knees to you now and implore you to give up this idea. But I think—you won't be angry with me, dear?—I think you would go just the same.”
“You seem to think that I am obstinate,” Philippa complained.
“You see, you are temperamental, dear,” Helen reminded her. “You have a complex nature. I know very well that you need the daily love that Henry doesn't seem to have been willing to give you lately, and I couldn't stop your turning towards the sun, you know. Only—all the time there's that terrible anxiety—are you quite sure it is the sun?”
“You believe in Mr. Lessingham, don't you?” Philippa asked.
“I do indeed,” Helen replied. “I am not quite sure, though, that I believe in you.”
Philippa was a little startled.
“Well, I never!” she exclaimed. “Exactly what do you mean by that, Helen?”