"I remember," he said soberly, "you went to China once before then——" His glance fell on the pages of the book and he picked it up, turning its meaningless leaves.
"It is all about Etruria," she said. "Evie borrowed it from the store. They have a circulating library at the store. Have you seen Evie?"
He shook his head. "Not for weeks," he said, "I am usually in my room when she comes home."
Christina Colebrook, invalid and visionary, puckered her smooth brows into a frown. She had emerged from her world of dreams and make-believe and was facing the ugliness of life that eddied about her bed.
"Evie is changed quite a lot," she said. "She is quieter and dresses more carefully. Not in the way you would notice, she always had good taste, but especially in the way of underclothes. All girls adore swagger underclothes. They live in dread that one day they will be knocked down by a motor-bus and taken to a hospital wearing a shabby camisole! But Evie—she's collecting all sorts of things. You might think she was getting together a trousseau. Has she ever spoken to you about anybody called 'Ronnie'?"
"No—she never speaks to me," said Ambrose.
"You know nobody called Ronnie?"
He signified his ignorance. At the moment he did not associate the name.
"She talks in her sleep," Christina went on slowly, "and she's spoken that name lots of times. I haven't told mother; what would be the good, with her heart as it is? 'Ronnie' is the man who is worrying her. I think she is in love with him, or what she thinks is love. And he is somebody in a good station of life, because once she called out in the middle of the night, 'Ronnie, take me in your car.'"
Sault was silent. This was the first time Christina had ever spoken to him about the girl.