“It’s a blow.”
“I always thought that you and David—”
Margaret met her eyes bravely but she did not answer the implicit question.
“I always thought that you and Jimmie—” she said presently. “Oh! Gertrude, you would have been so good for him.”
“Oh! it’s all over now,” Gertrude said, “but I didn’t know that a living soul suspected me.”
“I’ve known for a long time.”
“Are you really hurt, dear?” Gertrude whispered as they clung to each other. 259
“Not really. It could have been—that’s all. He could have made me care. I’ve never seen any one else whom I thought that of. I—I was so used to him.”
“That’s the rub,” Gertrude said, “we’re so used to them. They’re so—so preposterously necessary to us.”
Late that night clasped in each other’s arms they admitted the extent of their desolation. Life had been robbed of a magic,—a mystery. The solid friendship of years of mutual trust and understanding was the background of so much lovely folly, so many unrealized possibilities, so many nebulous desires and dreams that the sudden dissolution of their circle was an unthinkable calamity.