“How many people, I wonder?”
“I don’t think one always knows whom one cares for until something happens.”
“Something?”
“Until one’s threatened with loss, or until one actually does lose somebody one loves. I”—she hesitated, stretched out her hand, and drew some notepaper out of a green case which stood on the table—“I had absolutely no idea what I felt for my mother until she died. She died very suddenly.”
Tears rushed to her eyes and her whole face suddenly reddened.
“Then I knew!” she said, in a broken voice.
Dion had never before seen her look as she was looking now.
For a moment he felt almost as if he were regarding a stranger. There was a sort of heat of anger in the face, which looked rebellious in its emotion; and he believed it was the rebellion in her face which made him realize how intensely she had been able to love her mother.
“Now I must write to Mrs. Chetwinde,” she said, suddenly bending over the notepaper, “and tell her we’ll come, and I’ll sing.”
“Yes.”