"Was he?"
"He pulled my soul out of the flesh-pots. I'm a sort of Israel come out of Egypt, but an Egypt that was altogether too comfortable."
"Too comfortable? Can one be too comfortable?"
"I was. I couldn't move or see or breathe for comfort. It was like a feather bed all over me."
"I wouldn't call that comfort," said Robin, for she paused, and he was afraid she was not going on. "It sounds much more like torture."
"So it was at last. And Fritzi helped me to shake it off. If he hadn't I'd have smothered slowly, and perhaps if I'd never known him I'd have done it as gracefully as my sisters did. Why, they don't know to this day that they are dead."
Robin was silent. He was afraid to speak lest anything he said should remind her of the part she ought to be playing. He had no doubt now at all that she was keeping a secret. A hundred questions were burning on his lips. He hated himself for wanting to ask them, for being so inquisitive, for taking advantage of the girl's being off her guard, but what are you to do with your inherited failings? Robin's mother was inquisitive and it had got into his blood, and I know of no moral magnesia that will purify these things away. "You said the other day," he burst out at last, quite unable to stop himself, "that you only had your uncle in the world. Are your sisters—are they in London?"
"In London?" Priscilla gazed at him a moment with a vague surprise. Then fright flashed into her eyes. "Did I not tell you they were dead? Smothered?" she said, getting up quickly, her face setting into the frown that had so chilled Tussie on the heath.
"But I took that as a parable."
"How can I help how you took it?"