“I don’t know.”
Anne settled herself against a sapling.
“I feel as if I had reached the one breathing-place of my life. You don’t know that sensation.”
“Do you think you would like it—often?” asked Millie.
“Certainly not. It is liking it so much which is so unexpected to me. I am of the world—worldly. And to find myself exhilarated and delighted is like growing young again.”
Millie had to smile.
“You are not so old!”
“Aged!—in experience. As for years, they don’t count, or I dare say we might find that I am not so much older than you as you—as every one—would imagine. But I have lived.” Did that mean she had loved? Millie coloured at the charge of inexperience, galling to youth.
“You can know little about me,” she protested.
“Next to nothing. Tell me. You live alone with your mother?”