"It was awfully nice of you to come," said Ishmael, taking the little hand that lay idle against a flounce. She made no motion to withdraw it or to move away, and glancing up at her he saw there were tears in her eyes. As he looked they slipped over her lashes and rolled down her cheeks. She made no effort to stay them, nor did she sob—she cried with the effortless sorrow of a tired child.
"Phoebe! why, what's the matter? Are you unhappy about anything?
Phoebe, do tell me what it is?"
She shook her head but stammered out:
"It's nothing, but I'm sort of frightened…. I can't tell you about what. And I thought you might be able to help me and put it all right, but you can't."
"How do you know I can't? You haven't tried me."
"Yes, I have," she said, half-laughing now through her tears that were already dry upon her cheeks. Whatever thought, whatever fear, whatever glimpsing of dread possibilities in herself or in some other person had brought her to his side that afternoon was already weighing less unbearably upon her, though she had failed in her attempt to find an easing. Her mind simply could not sustain for long one idea, and in the passing moment she was always able to find distraction. She found it now in Vassie, who came sweeping in, slightly flushed and with a lighter manner than that with which she had ushered in Phoebe. She bore her off with promise of tea and a look at new gowns with none the less determination, but the sight of tearstains on Phoebe's cheek at once softened and relieved her.
Ishmael was left with a vague feeling that he had failed Phoebe in something she had expected of him. Yet for himself he was cheered by her visit, for it had served to bring him out of that dead, still peace where he had been for so many days, that had not lightened even with returning strength, but that had been swept away by the breath of the commonplace Phoebe brought with her.
As to Vassie, she was occupied with wondering whether the passionate yet careless caresses that Killigrew had lavished on her that afternoon "meant anything" or not. He had told her that in France they always said that "love was an affair of the skin…." And she knew she had a perfect skin. Killigrew had told her it was perfect to stroke as well as gaze upon; none of her English swains had ever told her that. She always looked on Killigrew as a foreigner because he was so alien to herself.
Yet that evening he spent with Ishmael and the Parson, and the next day a grey uncertain morning of blown clouds found Ishmael and Killigrew both seated in the train while she waved her handkerchief at them from a receding platform. And if that handkerchief were to be wet with tears that were not for her brother nor yet for Killigrew except in so far as he had, with his gay tongue and sudden secret kisses, awakened hopes in her that she was beginning to see, by his very nature, could have no foundation, at least she let no one even guess at it. They were tears of rage, almost as much with herself as him, and if Killigrew were never to have had more upon his conscience than a light flirtation with this ambitious and far from ignorant girl, there would have been little to disturb his healthy slumbers. Vassie was not one to waste time over the regrets that eat at the heart, and, though she could not altogether stifle pain at the outset, her strong-set will made the inevitable period of recurrent pangs shorter for her than for most. Killigrew had played the game quite fairly according to his code; it was Vassie's ignorance of any form of philandering beyond the crude interchange of repartee and kisses of the young clerks she had hitherto met that had made the playing of it unequal. She and Phoebe were both enacting the oldest woman's part in the world—that of being left behind to wait; and it was two very unwitting youths who left them. As the train gathered speed on its long journey both Ishmael and Killigrew had their minds on what lay before them, not on anything left behind.