“What you have told me,” he said slowly, “has made me feel very sad, for your sake. I was so sure you were happy. But for my own sake … I don’t know … I think it has made you seem less terribly remote. I felt before that we were in different hemispheres. Now … well, we at least inhabit the same imperfect planet. And it’s a wonderful thing for me to know any one like you. To-night has been …”
“I’m so glad if you haven’t minded it. I was afraid you’d hate it, or at least be bored.”
“Bored?” He smiled.
“I suppose I must have made friends when I was young,” he went on. “I remember imagining myself in love once or twice, and I was exactly like any other young man, no doubt. Then I went out to South Africa, and after the war I came home to find my mother dead. I was very ill for a long time, and I got out of the habit of seeing people. Then, when my health improved, I began to write. Articles; all sorts of things. Then I was sent out to India to join my regiment, and while I was there I began the book on religions, but for some years I hardly did more than make a beginning. But at last I got so interested in it that when I returned from India I left the army and went to live in a lonely cottage in Cornwall that belonged to my mother. I suppose I allowed the book to become an obsession, as Lady Gregory said, for I spent weeks—months sometimes—without seeing a soul except the village people, and Major Stroud now and then. Then the war came, and until 1919 I was in France. When I came home, I took the flat in Campden Hill. The night … the night of the accident, Major Stroud had dragged me out to dine at his club. I remember he had been lecturing me for being such a hermit.”
“And rightly,” said Judy.
“Still, I should have gone on being a hermit, if you hadn’t come just when you did.” He paused. “And yet there are people who deny that there’s a benevolent Deity who orders our lives.”
Captain Stevens might have said that and meant nothing by it, and if he had said it, Judy would have had a retort ready. But coming from Chip, it could not be treated so lightly. How much, she wondered, did he mean? Oh, he meant what he said, of course, but how much did he mean her to understand by it? And then she realized that had he meant to express more than an appreciation of her friendship, he could never have said it so easily.
“Let’s hope your Deity will take an interest in the book,” she said, and then was suddenly aware that she had spent the greater part of the evening talking to Chip. She looked about her. Helen and Gordon were dancing. Connie had boldly taken the floor with Noel a few minutes previously, but was now watching him dance with one of the Winslow girls, and Captain Stevens was dancing with the other. Millie was nowhere to be seen. Not for a moment must Connie be allowed to regret that she hadn’t dined with Petrovitch.
“Come and help me amuse my aunt,” said Judy. Then, with a sparkle in her eyes, “And if you can think of any pretty speeches to make her such as you have just made me, so much the better.”