I had noticed it. And then she went on again: "You ought to have seen him years ago at those bacteriology lectures. He didn't teach bacteriology—he preached it. And it was the same sort of thing with the hills—he didn't climb them; he conquered them."
She talked about him effortlessly, as if she were somehow drifting in a strong and peaceful tide. When I put a question about Severn she had to fight the tide while she gave a slow and reluctant answer.... Geoffrey, she said, was very busy and perfectly the same.
But the oddest thing of all was her calm remark: "Of course it's quite easy to see what will happen. Sooner or later he'll marry June. She's quite in love with him, and he'll be with her after a while.... Do you remember years ago you asked me what I would do with Terry in the end, and I said I would hand him over when the right girl came along.... But I never thought that the right girl would be June."
"You think June is the right girl?" I asked; and she answered: "I think he will feel she is if he tries hard enough."
I forgave her for that mocking retort. I didn't tell her that already, without trying at all, Terry had grown to see in June what, perhaps, he had never seen in any other woman—a mirror of the future, calm and bright with happiness. It would have been too cruel to have told her that, to have smashed her dear belief that she could have had Terry for not much more than the asking. She has kept her word, and that counts none the less because it wouldn't have greatly mattered if she hadn't kept it.
We were in the midst of tea when the telegraph-boy arrived. I went out into my small lobby, and when I came back she noticed the change in my face; it was stupid not to have had more control of myself.
"Good news, I can see," she said.
And I stammered hazily something about a business affair that I had been hoping would happen.... Oh, yes, quite good news.
That telegram is before me now as I write ... Handed in at Oxford at 4.10 P.M. (What were they doing at Oxford? A motor excursion, presumably.) ... Received at London, W.1. at 4.50 P.M.... And then:
"Took your advice succeeded thanks June."