Oh, why did she feel so tender towards the whole world to-night? Everything was good—was right. All that happened seemed to fill again her brimming cup of bliss.
And still, in the back of her mind, there was the pear tree. It would be silver now, in the light of poor dear Eddie’s moon, silver as Miss Fulton, who sat there turning a tangerine in her slender fingers that were so pale a light seemed to come from them.
What she simply couldn’t make out—what was miraculous—was how she should have guessed Miss Fulton’s mood so exactly and so instantly. For she never doubted for a moment that she was right, and yet what had she to go on? Less than nothing.
“I believe this does happen very, very rarely between women. Never between men,” thought Bertha. “But while I am making the coffee in the drawing-room perhaps she will ‘give a sign.’”
What she meant by that she did not know, and what would happen after that she could not imagine.
While she thought like this she saw herself talking and laughing. She had to talk because of her desire to laugh.
“I must laugh or die.”
But when she noticed Face’s funny little habit of tucking something down the front of her bodice—as if she kept a tiny, secret hoard of nuts there, too—Bertha had to dig her nails into her hands—so as not to laugh too much.
It was over at last. And: “Come and see my new coffee machine,” said Bertha.
“We only have a new coffee machine once a fortnight,” said Harry. Face took her arm this time; Miss Fulton bent her head and followed after.