“Quite well, thank you.”
It was all so commonplace, and the moment had given her so much strength, that Winifred made a desperate resolution.
“I have just been told something,” she said, looking straight in his face and smiling. “I hear that you are going to marry Miss Lovell. Please let me congratulate you, unless it is too soon.”
There was a flush on her cheek, and her words ended with an odd ring of hardness, but no one would have been likely to read these little signs. Anthony looked at her more kindly than he had yet done, and said “Thank you” gravely.
That was all. A few words, the river running through the waving grass, a woodpecker scraping the tree, flies darting here and there, Sniff dashing after a trout, Anthony, who once had been so near them all, standing by her, and answering from the other side of a great gulf. That was all. It did not seem as if Winifred could say any more except the good-by of which the air was full, and which all the little leaves in the wood rustled as she passed under them.
Anthony stood still for a moment and watched her going away. He had a very tender heart, poor fellow, though it was obstinate and proud in many things, and too angry now to be just. A remembrance of old times was sure to soften him, when once he realised that they were old and past; and he began to think that, after all, Winifred was not, perhaps, an enemy. He watched her, and then called Sniff out of the bright brown water and walked away.
As for Winifred—well, it was on her knees that she fought her battle, into which neither you nor I need look.
Almost to all people, I suppose, there comes a time in their lives when life, not death, is the phantom they dread. One fear may be as unworthy as the other, but it is there. Only for both there is a merciful Hand stretched out, and if into that Hand we put our own it will lead us gently until we are brought face to face with our fear, and see that the dread phantom has, indeed, as it were, the face of an angel.