Grant wondered how much of this arrangement was due to Mrs. Murdoch’s sympathy for the bereaved girl, and how much to the addition which it made to the family income. No doubt both considerations had contributed to it.
“I called at your old home,” he continued. “I needn’t say how distressed I was to hear—The woman could tell me nothing of you, so I came to Murdoch, hoping—”
“Yes,” she said, simply, as though there were nothing more to explain. Grant noticed that her eyes were larger and her cheeks paler than they had been, but the delight of her presence leapt about him. Her hurried costume seemed to accentuate her beauty despite of all that war had done to destroy it. There was a silence which lengthened out. They were all groping for a footing.
Mrs. Murdoch met the situation by insisting that she would put on the kettle, and Mr. Murdoch, in a burst of almost divine inspiration, insisted that his wife was quite incompetent to light the gas alone at that hour of the night. When the old folks had shuffled into the kitchen Grant found himself standing close to Phyllis Bruce.
“Why didn’t you answer my letters?” he demanded, plunging to the issue with the directness of his nature.
“Because I had promised to let you forget,” she replied. There was a softness in her voice which he had not noted in those bygone days; she seemed more resigned and yet more poised; the strange wizardry of suffering had worked new wonders in her soul. Suddenly, as he looked upon her, he became aware of a new quality in Phyllis Bruce—the quality of gentleness. She had added this to her unique self-confidence, and it had toned down the angularities of her character. To Grant, straight from his long exile from fine womanly domesticity, she suddenly seemed altogether captivating.
“But I didn’t want to forget!” he insisted. “I wanted not to forget—YOU.”
She could not misunderstand the emphasis he placed on that last word, but she continued as though he had not interrupted.
“I knew you would write once or twice out of courtesy. I knew you would do that. I made up my mind that if you wrote three times, then I would know you really wanted to remember me.... I did not get any third letter.”
“But how could I know that you had placed such a test—such an arbitrary measurement—upon my friendship?”