“It can’t last, Gilly,” she confided to Gillian one day, caught by an access of superstitious fear. “It simply can’t last! No one was meant to be as happy as I am!”
“I think we were all meant to be happy,” replied Gillian simply. “Happy and good!” she added, laughing.
“Yes. But I haven’t been particularly good. I’ve just done whatever it occurred to me to do without considering the consequences. I expect I shall be made to take my consequences all in a heap together one day.”
Gillian smiled.
“Then I suppose we shall all of us have to rally round and get you out of them,” she said cheerfully.
“Perhaps—perhaps you wouldn’t be able to.”
There was a strange note of foreboding in Magda’s voice—an accent of fatality, and despite herself Gillian experienced a reflex sense of uneasiness.
“Nonsense!” she said brusquely. “What on earth has put all these ridiculous notions into your head?”
Magda smiled at her. “I think it was four lines I read in a book yesterday. They set me thinking.”
“More’s the pity then!” grumbled Gillian. “What were they?”