A tap at the door startled her. While she was hurrying towards it, across the moonlit room, it opened, and Cecily came in.
She was in a long, pale-colored Japanese wrapper, her hair all loose about her face. Standing there in the moonlight, she was the girl Mrs. Summers remembered, and with a revulsion of feeling too glad for words she took her by the arms and put her into an easy-chair near the window.
“It was so lovely, I blew out the candles,” she began.
“Yes,” murmured Cecily, absently. She leaned forward and touched her cousin’s dress with trembling fingers. “It wasn’t because I was horrid or anything that I didn’t stay,” she said, incoherently. “It was because I was afraid to begin. I’m afraid to let myself——” She put her hand on her breast with a gesture that, to Rose, was more eloquent than the broken sentence.
“Tell me, dear,” she urged. “I would have bitten off my tongue rather than have said all I did to-day, but, apart from that, I can’t help seeing that things are wrong with you. I felt it from the first moment. It made me nervous, I suppose, and so I babbled on like a fool about the first thing that came into my head.”
“It doesn’t matter,” returned Cecily, in a weak voice. “It isn’t that.”
“Tell me,” urged Rose again.
“It’s difficult,” she murmured, after a moment, “because there doesn’t seem anything definite to tell. It’s just come like this.”
There was a silence through which Mrs. Summers waited patiently.
“Rose,” she heard at last, “you saw Robert with me, before you went away. He seemed in love, didn’t he?”