"Well?" asked Julian, encouragingly. "Better get it over, hadn't we? World come to pieces worse than usual this morning?"
"I don't know how to tell you," she said wretchedly. "For you perhaps it has—I have heard from Marian."
Julian picked up his pipe, which he had allowed to go out when Stella came in, relit it, and smiled at the back of her head. He looked extraordinarily amused and cheerful.
"She hadn't written to me," Stella went on without turning round, "for ages and ages,—you remember I told you?—and now she has."
"She was always an uncertain correspondent," said Julian, smoothly. "Am I to see this letter? Message for me, perhaps? Or doesn't she know you're here?"
"Oh, no!" cried Stella, quickly. "I mean there's nothing in it you couldn't see, of course. There is a kind of message; still, she didn't mean you actually to see it. She heard somehow that I was here, and she wanted me to tell you—" Stella's voice broke, but she picked herself up and went on, jerking out the cruel words that shook her to the heart,— "she wanted me to tell you that she's—she's going to be married."
Stella heard a curious sound from Julian incredibly like a chuckle. She flinched, and held herself away from him. He would not want her to see how he suffered. There was a long silence.
"Stella," said Julian at last in that singular, soft, new voice of his that he occasionally used when they were alone together, "the ravages of pain are now hidden. You can turn round."
She came back to him uncertainly, and sat down by the window at his feet. He had a tender teasing look that she could not quite understand. His eyes themselves never wavered as they met hers, but the eagerness in them wavered; his tenderness seemed to hold it back.
She thought that Julian's eyes had grown curiously friendly lately. Despite his pain, they were very friendly now.