Into Miss Ann's pale blue eyes shot a gleam of nervous anxiety.
Sweetie-weet chirped, interrogatively.
Then Miss Ann, recovering, clasped her hands. "Ah, what a beautiful definition!" she said. "What could be more pure, more perfect?"
Miss Charteris knew a love of a very different kind, which was absolutely pure, and altogether perfect. But that was the love she had put from her.
"A woman could hardly marry a book," she said.
Miss Ann gave a little deprecatory shriek. "Darling child!" she cried. "No simile, however beautiful, should be pressed too far! Your exquisite description of your love for dear Kenrick merely assures us that your union with him will prove one of complete contentment to the mind. And the mind—that sensitive instrument, attuned to all the immensities of the intellectual spheres—the mind is what really matters."
"Bodies count," said Miss Charteris, with conviction; adding beneath her breath, the dawning of a smile in her sad eyes: "We shall jolly well find, bodies count."
Miss Ann's hearing, as we have already remarked, was preternaturally sharp. She started. "My dear Christobel, what an expression! And do you not think, that, under these circumstances, any mention of bodies savours of impropriety?"
Miss Charteris turned quickly. The colour flamed into her beautiful face. The glint of angry indignation flashed from her eyes. But the elderly figure on the couch looked so small and frail. To wound and crush it would be so easy; and so unworthy of her strength, and wider experience.
Suddenly she remembered a little blue back, round with grief and shame; a small sandy face, silent and unflinching; a brave little heart which kept its faith in God, and prayed on trustfully, while nurses misunderstood and bullied. Then Miss Charteris conquered her own wrath.