“Of course—I am glad ... to see you.”
In a peculiar dreamy way she began to add milk to the coffee. It seemed as if this were mere play-acting, and not real life at all.
“How is it that you are here?” he asked, with a broken, disjointed laugh. “You cannot imagine how strange an effect it was ... for me ... to come in and see you ... here—of all people.”
She looked at him gravely, and moved a step towards him.
“Aunt Judy is dead!” she explained; “and Aunt Hester is very ill. Mother is upstairs with them—her—now. I have just come from the room, where I have been since midnight.”
She stopped, raised her hand to her hair as if recollecting something, and stood looking sideways out of the window.
“There is something about you this morning,” he said, with a concentrated deliberation, “that brings back the old Prague days. I suppose it is that I have not seen your hair as you have it to-day—since then.”
She turned quite away from his hungry gaze, looking out of the window.
After a pause she broke the silence—with infinite tact—not speaking too hurriedly.
“It has been a terrible week,” she said. “Mother heard from Mr. Bodery that they were very ill; so we came. I never dreamt that it was so bad when you spoke of them. Five years it has been going on?”