III
Later in the day the girl came, her face wearing an expression of deadly earnest. Already Mrs. Trench’s hope was transformed into certainty. Judith led the way to the little boudoir Lary had fitted for her on the second floor.
“Now, dear, what is it?” she asked when the door was shut.
“The most important trouble I ever had. I ought to have written you—when Syd first asked me. But I did so want to tell papa first ... before even you. I owe him that, for all the pain I caused him. Syd wants to be married on my eighteenth birthday, and that’s less than three weeks off.”
“And you love him, Eileen?”
“As I never thought it would be possible to love. We just belong together—like you and Lary, only, oh, so different. I can see it in a hundred ways. When I don’t get what he’s trying to tell me—abstract ideas, you know—he goes up to the landing in the reception hall and sits down at his mother’s pipe organ and puts the thought into something that I can get hold of. When a man can talk to you that way—and music is the only language you really do understand—there is only one answer. If I’m in an ugly mood, he doesn’t scold or upbraid me. He works out a theme in A-minor. I try to run away from it, and I can’t. I’ve made bold to go past him, up to my room, and my feet wouldn’t carry me up the stairs.”
“And then, Eileen?”
“I cry it out on his shoulder. After I have washed the meanness out, we can talk sense. I don’t mind in the least—that he’s always right.”
“And there’s one point on which you can’t come to an agreement?”
“Yes, only one. Judith, how far is it necessary to go with confession of something that you know will lose you the respect and affection of—”