Philippa raised her head, pushing her hair away from her haggard eyes. She looked old and beaten and hunted as she sat there.
“There’s nothing much to tell,” she said, doggedly. “That’s what I did—and I’ve paid for it. It’s awful to get into a net. I saw your husband was interested in me—at the beginning, I mean. I couldn’t afford to let him go.”
The slow color rose to Cecily’s cheek. Chaotic emotions surged within her; among them shame, and a curious despairing pity that after all her husband had never been loved—merely tricked,—deceived. “Poor Robin!” she found herself repeating silently, with a sort of passion of protection, as she returned in thought to the “little” name of their happy days.
Philippa was still talking, wildly, incoherently, as though with relief.
“And then when I met Nigel, and he wanted to marry me, I was thankful. I was so tired of struggling and having to pretend. I wanted to feel safe and—and sheltered. I wanted it so much. And now I shall lose him too. And it will all begin over again—all over again——” She stopped, drawing a long, exhausted breath.
Cecily rose and went to the window, which she threw wider open. She felt that she wanted fresh air. Then she turned. “Listen!” she said. “Don’t say any more. Go home now, and write to me. Tell me just what you want to put things straight, and I’ll manage it somehow.”
For a minute Philippa sat motionless, staring, her mouth a little open, her untidy hair hanging round her face.
“You mean——?” she began.
“I should like to put things quite straight for you,” Cecily answered, simply.
Philippa rose rather unsteadily to her feet. She began to realize that she was safe. With the knowledge, her old self, the self made out of incessant posing, constant mental attitudinizing, began to gather like a shell over the elemental human being for whom Cecily had been experiencing a very passion of pity.