“Good-bye,” she repeated. And then she lifted up her face and, with a surprise which his good breeding enabled him completely to conceal, he realised that she expected him to bend down and kiss her, in front of the Englishwoman who stood by, looking at them curiously.
He did kiss her—he kissed her as an affectionate brother would have done. “Thank you, Lily!” he whispered.
He felt very much moved and touched. She was an angel after all! But deep in his heart he realised something else—that this was to be their final parting—that she did not intend that they should meet again.
He turned away, and Lily walked through into the hall.
“Is anything the matter?” asked the matron uneasily. “You look very ill, Miss Fairfield. You look——”
She took hold of the girl’s hand and brought her gently forward to a window.
“You look, my dear, as if you’d had a shock! Has anything happened?”
“I have had a shock,” said Lily dully. “But I can’t tell you what gave it me. It isn’t my secret. It’s because I feel so queer and ill that I came here earlier than I meant to do.”
“You did quite right! And now you had better go straight to bed. I’ll send you up a little lunch on a tray.”
And then Lily began to cry—very quietly.