"I'm not sure that I haven't been doing you an injustice."
The woman laughed.
"I shouldn't wonder. I've been doing the same to you. We are all of us continually doing each other an injustice; that sort of thing depends a good deal on the mood you're in and on whether the world is going well with us. I hope that, for both of us, in the future it will go very well indeed. Good-bye."
The woman was gone and the door was closed, and almost before she knew it the girl was left alone. Some few minutes later there came a tapping at the door; it was opened, and Major Reith came in. He found Violet Forster sitting on the floor beside the couch, her face pillowed on a cushion. When she raised it he saw that she was crying. The sight moved him to sympathy and anger.
"Miss Forster!" he exclaimed. "What has that abominable woman been saying--or doing?"
Her answer filled him with amazement.
"I'm not sure," she said, "that she is an abominable woman, and--I'm not sure that I'm not the happiest girl in the world."
It seemed such an astounding thing for her to say that he appeared to be in doubt as to whether he ought to credit the evidence of his own ears. But there was such a light upon her face, which was no longer white, and such a smile was shining from behind the tears that, almost incredible though he deemed it, he was forced to the conclusion that he must have heard aright, especially when, rising to her feet, she came close to him and laughed in his face.
"Yes," she told him, "you may stare; but at least I am not sure that I am not much happier than I deserve. And now I'll wash my face and dry my eyes, and I'll put my hat on straight; I know it's all lop-sided--you've no idea how easy it is for a woman's hat to get lop-sided--and then you can take me for that stroll in the park."