“Who loves me?”
“Stephen Glynn. Oh, Pixie, didn’t you see?”
The colour faded from Pixie’s face; she threw out her hand as if to ward off a threatened danger. There was a note almost of anger in her reply—
“It’s not true; it’s not! It couldn’t be true. ... He care for me! For Me! You’re mad, Bridgie! You’re dreaming! There’s nothing...”
“Oh, Pixie, there is! I saw it the first evening. I’d have spoken before, but Pat was so ill. Then I tried—you know how. I tried!—to send you away. I knew that every day was making it harder for him, more difficult to forget. I was so sorry for him! Pixie, he is thirty-five, and has suffered so much. It’s hard on a man when he gets to that age, and—”
“Don’t!” cried Pixie sharply. She thrust out her hand once more, and cowered as if from a blow. “Bridgie, I can’t bear it! Don’t torture me, Bridgie. ... It isn’t true! You are making it up. Ah, Bridgie, it’s because you love me yourself that you think every one must do the same! He’s—Stanor’s uncle ... Pat’s friend—he was just kind like other friends. ... He never said a word ... looked a look.” Suddenly, unexpectedly the blood flared in her face as memory took her back to the hour when she stood at the door of the flat and watched Stephen’s abrupt descent down the flagged stairway. “Oh, Bridgie, are ye sure? Are ye sure? How are ye sure? It’s so easy to be deceived! Bridgie, you’ve no right to say it if you are not sure. I don’t believe you! Nothing could make me believe unless he said—”
“Pixie, he has said!” The words fell from Bridgie’s lips as though in opposition to her judgment she were compelled to speak them. “Pat was hurt that he was going; he reproached him to-night after we left; they had a discussion about it, and he said Stephen Glynn said that he daren’t stay, he daren’t see more of you. ... Pat does not think he meant to say it, it just—said itself! And afterwards he set his lips, and put on his haughty air, and turned the conversation, and Pat dared not say another word. But he had said enough. ... His face! ... his voice! ... Pat did not believe he could feel so much. He cares desperately, Pixie.”
Pixie sat motionless—so silent, so motionless, that not a breath seemed to stir her being. Bridgie waited, her face full of motherly tenderness, but the silence was so long, so intense, that by degrees the tenderness changed into anxiety. It was unlike emotional Pixie to face any crisis of life in silence; the necessity to express herself had ever been her leading characteristic, so that lack of expression was of all things the most startling, in her sister’s estimation. She stretched out her hand, and laid it on the bowed shoulder with a firm, strengthening touch.
“Pixie! Look up! Speak to me! What are you thinking, dear?”
Pixie raised her face, a set face, which to the watching eyes seemed apiece with the former silence. There seemed no expression on it; it was a lifeless mask which had been swept of expression. As the blank eyes looked into her own and the lips mechanically moved, Bridgie had the sensation of facing a stranger in the place of the beloved little sister.