After a little while Miss Allen suggested the Cinema. Mrs. Porter received the idea with eagerness. They went to the West-End house, and the first occasion was a triumphant success. How Mrs. Porter loved it! Just the kind of a story for her—Mary Pickford in Daddy Long Legs. To tell the truth, Mrs. Porter cried her eyes out. She swore that she had never in her life enjoyed anything so much. And the music! How beautiful! How restful! They would go every week....
The second occasion was, unfortunately, disastrous. The story was one of modern life, a woman persecuted by her husband, driven by his brutality into the arms of her lover. The husband was the customary cinema villain—broad, stout, sneering, and over-dressed. Mrs. Porter fainted and had to be carried out by two attendants. A doctor came to see her, said that she was suffering from nervous exhaustion and must be protected from all excitement.... The two ladies sat now every evening in their pretty sitting-room, and Miss Allen read aloud the novels of Dickens one after the other.
More and more persistently, in spite of herself, did curiosity about the late Mr. Porter drive itself in upon Miss Allen. She told herself that curiosity itself was vulgar and unworthy of the philosophy that she had created for herself out of life. Nevertheless it persisted. Soon she felt that, after all, it was justified. Were she to help this poor old lady to whom she was now most deeply attached, she must know more. She could not give her any real help unless she might gauge more accurately her trouble—but she was a shy woman, shy, especially, of forcing personal confidences. She hesitated; then she was aware that a barrier was being created between them. The evening had many silences, and Miss Allen detected many strange, surreptitious glances thrown at her by the old lady. The situation was impossible. One night she asked her a question.
"Dear Mrs. Porter," she said, her heart beating strangely as she spoke, "I do hope that you will not think me impertinent, but you have been so good to me that you have made me love you. You are suffering, and I cannot bear to see you unhappy. I want, oh, so eagerly, to help you! Is there nothing I can do?"
Mrs. Porter said nothing. Her hands quivered; then a tear stole down her cheek. Miss Allen went over to her, sat down beside her and took her hand.
"You must let me help you," she said. "Dismiss me if I am asking you questions that I should not. But I would rather leave you altogether, happy though I am with you, than see you so miserable. Tell me what I can do."
"You can do nothing, Lucy dear," said the old lady.
"But I must be able to do something. You are keeping from me some secret——"
Mrs. Porter shook her head....
It was one evening in early May that Miss Allen was suddenly conscious that there was something wrong with the pretty little sitting-room, and it was shortly after her first consciousness of this that poor old Mrs. Porter revealed her secret. Miss Allen, looking up for a moment, fancied that the little white marble clock on the mantelpiece had ceased to tick.