“No real lasting friends. They were French girls, you see, and there was the difference of race, and religion, to divide us as we grew up. And we were birds of passage, mother and I; always moving about.”
“You felt the need of companionship?”
“No. I had mother, and we were like girls together.” The twin dimples showed in a mischievous smile. “You seem very anxious to hear that I was lonely!”
“Well!” said Erskine, and hesitated as though he found it impossible to deny the accusation. “I wanted to feel that you could sympathise with me! I’ve been more or less lonely all my life, but I have always felt that a time would come when it would be all right—when I’d meet some one who’d understand. I was great chums with my father, but he died when I was twelve, and my school chum went off to China, and comes home for a few months every three years, when it has usually happened that I’ve been abroad. There are nice enough fellows in the regiment, but I suppose I’m not quick at making friends—”
Strive as she would Claire could not resist a twinkle of amusement, their eyes met, and both went off into a peal of laughter.
“Oh, well, there are exceptions! That’s different. I felt that I knew you at once, without any preliminary stages. It must always be like that when people really fit.” And then after a short pause he added in boyish, ingenuous tones, “Did you feel that you knew me?”
“I—I think I did!” Claire acknowledged. To both it seemed the most wonderful, the most absorbing of conversations. They were blissfully unconscious that it was old as the hills themselves, and had been repeated with ceaseless reiteration from prehistoric periods. Only once was there an interruption of the deep mutual happiness and that came without warning. Claire was smiling in blissful contentment, unconscious of a care, when suddenly a knife-like pain stabbed her heart. Imagination had wafted her back to Staff-Room. She saw the faces of the fifteen women seated around the table, women who were with but one exception past their youth, approaching nearer and nearer to dreaded age, and an inward voice whispered that to each in her turn had come this golden hour, the hour of dreams, of sweet, illuminative hope. The hour had come, and the hour had passed, leaving behind nothing but a memory and a regret. Why should she herself be more blessed than others? She looked forward and saw a vision of herself ten years hence still hurrying along the well-known street looking up at the clock in the church tower to assure herself that she was in time, still mounting the same bare staircase, still hanging up her hat on the same peg. The prose of it in contradistinction with the poetry of the present was terrifying to Claire’s youthful mind, and her look was so white, so strained, that Erskine took instant alarm.
“What is it? What is it? Are you ill? Have I said anything to upset you? I say, what is the matter!”
“Nothing. Nothing! I had a—thought! Talk hard, please, and make me forget!”
The end of the two hours found the cross-questioning still in full force; the man and the girl alike still feeling that the half was not yet told. They resented the quick passage of time, resented the disturbance of the afternoon hours.