"Are you quite certain?" she said. "You told me once that—that there had been other times."
"They are useful, those foolish episodes. They explain to one the difference." The tone of this was very even, very usual, but Alicia was aware of a suggestion in it that accused her of aggression, that almost ranged her hostile. She hurried out of that position.
"If it were possible," she said, frowning at her embarrassment. "I see nothing—nothing really—against it."
"I should think not! Can't you conceive what I could do for him?"
"And what could he do for you?" Alicia asked, with a flash of curiosity.
"I don't think I can let you ask me that."
"There are such strange things to consider! Would he withdraw from the Church? Would you retire from the stage? I don't know which seems the more impossible!"
Hilda got up.
"It would be a criminal choice, wouldn't it?" she said. "I haven't made it out. And he, you know, still dreams only of Bengali souls for redemption, never of me at all."
A servant of the house, with the air of a messenger, brought Alicia a scrap of paper. She glanced at it, and then, with hands that trembled, began folding it together.