He looked at her kindly, the look of one who saw all his fellow-creatures nobly, as it were, and to their best advantage.
"One may take an interest," she said, in a dissatisfied voice, poking at the snow crystals on the road before her with the thorn-stick she carried, "but one can do so little. And I don't know anything; not even what I want myself."
"No; one can do next to nothing. And systems and theories don't matter, or, at least, very little. Yet, when you and Aldous are together, there will be more chance of doing, for you than for most. You will be two happy and powerful people! His power will be doubled by happiness; I have always known that."
Marcella was seized with shyness, looked away, and did not know what to answer. At last she said abruptly—her head still turned to the woods on her left—
"Are you sure he is going to be happy?"
"Shall I produce his letter to me?" he said, bantering—"or letters? For I knew a great deal about you before October 5" (their engagement-day), "and suspected what was going to happen long before Aldous did. No; after all, no! Those letters are my last bit of the old friendship. But the new began that same day," he hastened to add, smiling: "It may be richer than the old; I don't know. It depends on you."
"I don't think—I am a very satisfactory friend," said Marcella, still awkward, and speaking with difficulty.
"Well, let me find out, won't you? I don't think Aldous would call me exacting. I believe he would give me a decent character, though I tease him a good deal. You must let me tell you sometime what he did for me—what he was to me—at Cambridge? I shall always feel sorry for Aldous's wife that she did not know him at college."
A shock went through Marcella at the word—that tremendous word—wife.
As Hallin said it, there was something intolerable in the claim it made!
"I should like you to tell me," she said faintly. Then she added, with more energy and a sudden advance of friendliness, "But you really must come in and rest. Aldous told me he thought the walk from the Court was too much for you. Shall we take this short way?"