"All alone?" said Daisy.
"Yes, dear."
Daisy uttered a sudden hard sigh. "You mustn't spend all your time with me any longer," she said. "I have been very selfish. I forgot. Go down to him, Muriel."
Muriel looked up, struck by something incomprehensible in her tone. "You know I like to be with you," she said. "And of course he understands."
But Daisy would not be satisfied. "That may be. But—but—I want you to go to him. He is lonely, poor boy. I can hear it in his step. I always know."
Wondering at her persistence, and somewhat reluctant, Muriel rose to comply. As she was about to pass her, with a swift movement Daisy caught her hand and drew her down.
"I want you—so—to be happy, dearest," she whispered, a quick note of passion in her voice. "It's better for you—it's better for you—to be together. I'm not going to monopolise you any longer. I will try to come down to-morrow, if Jim will let me. It's hockey day, isn't it? You must go and play as usual, you and he."
She was quivering with agitation as she pressed her lips to the girl's cheek. Muriel would have embraced her, but she pushed her softly away. "Go—go, dear," she insisted. "I wish it."
And Muriel went, seeing that she would not otherwise be pacified.
She found Blake depressed indeed, but genuinely pleased to see her, and she walked in the garden with him in the soft spring twilight till the dinner hour.