I nodded.
She gave a half sob. "Oh, poor, poor Violet!" And then, with the calmness that everyone seemed to acquire in the terrible first months of the war, "When did you hear about it?"
"Last night. Violet's not to be told till after the child's born. I felt Raney ought to know—he was our greatest friend."
We walked the best part of a mile in silence. Then Sonia said, "You were coming to tell me too?"
"Certainly."
"Thank you." Her head was bowed and her eyes turned to the ground. "I don't suppose you understand, George.... A man can't.... Oh, there was so much I wanted to say!"
"I think he understood everything," I said, taking her hand. "From the time when you offered him your good wishes on his marriage."
She seemed startled. "He told you about that?"
We were walking through country that to me was steeped in Loring's personality—the School Cricket Ground where he and I fielded at the nets as fags—the big Brynash Pond where we skated in the long frost of '94, the pavilion in the Southampton Road that marked the southernmost limit of Junior Bounds and skirting the forest the ribbon of white road along which seniors were privileged to tramp on their winter walks.