“Eh?”
“Tout passe.” She sighed.
Lionel looked at her uneasily, wondering if a vein of cynicism, seldom displayed, was merely superficial. At any rate Joyce and she had forced him to think, to analyse his thoughts, to draw inferences from them. He said slowly:
“I took it all for granted before I went to India. It never occurred to me then that I was fortunate in my home or in anything else. I remember ‘grousing’ if a cog in the machinery slipped. Machinery! That’s the word. I reckoned this to be machinery. By George! I hadn’t wit enough to reflect that machinery doesn’t last for ever and ever.”
She made no reply.
Her sprightly brain was busy, applying what he had said to herself. For her the past fortnight had been a fresh experience, and perfectly delightful. The peaceful atmosphere, the rest to her own over-stimulated nerves, her courteous hosts, her ever-increasing interest in the young man beside her, so different from the strivers and pushers of the metropolitan market-place—these had sufficed. Would they suffice if she held them in perpetuity?
Frankly, she didn’t know; an odd misgiving assailed her. Was she a creature of change, incapable of finding happiness in stable conditions?
She heard Lionel’s voice coming back to her, as if from a distance. He was talking of Fishpingle.
“The dear old boy kept wicket jolly well, and he looked so ripping on his flannels.”
“Yes. The moment I saw him—I knew. The mystery was solved.”