Audrey was standing at the window singing a little song to herself. She turned as the door opened, and when she saw Katherine she started ever so slightly, and stood at gaze like a frightened fawn. She was attracted by Katherine, as she was by every personality that she felt to be stronger than her own. Among all artists there is a strain of manhood in every woman, and of womanhood in every man. Katherine fascinated her weaker sister by some such super-feminine charm. At the same time, Audrey was afraid of her, as she had been afraid of Hardy in his passion, or of Ted in his boisterous mirth. There were moments when she thought that Katherine's direct unquestioning gaze must have seen what she hid from her own eyes, must have penetrated the more or less artistic disguises without which she would not have known herself. Now her one anxiety was lest Katherine knew or guessed her treatment of Vincent, and had come to reproach her with it. Owing to some slight similarity of detail, the events of the morning had brought the recollection of that last scene with Hardy uppermost in her mind. She had persuaded herself that her love for Ted was her first experience of passion, as it was his; but at the touch of one awkward memory the bloom was somehow brushed off this little romance. For these reasons there was fear in her grey eyes as she put up her face to Katherine's to be kissed.
"Do you know?" she half whispered. "Has he told you?"
"No, he has told me nothing; but I know."
There was silence as the two women sat down side by side and looked into each other's faces. Katherine's instinct was to soothe and protect the shy creatures that shrank from her, and Audrey in her doubt and timidity appealed to her more than she had ever done in the self-conscious triumph of her beauty. She took her hand, caressing it gently as she spoke.
"Audrey—you won't mind telling me frankly? Are you engaged to Ted?"
True to her imitative instincts, Audrey could be frank with the frank. "Yes, I am. But it's our own little secret, and we don't want anybody to know yet."
"Perhaps you are wise." She paused. How could she make Audrey understand what she had to say? She was not going to ask her to break off her engagement. In the first place, she had no right to do so; in the second place, any interference in these cases is generally fatal to its own ends. But she wanted to make Audrey realise the weight of her responsibility.
"Audrey," she said at last, "do you remember our first meeting, when you thought Ted was a baby?"
"Yes, of course I do. That was only six, seven months ago; and to think that I should be engaged to him now! Isn't it funny?"
"Very funny indeed. But you were perfectly right. He is a baby. He knows no more than a baby does of the world, and of the men in it. Of the women he knows rather less than an intelligent baby."