"How is it all going to end?" was her despondent query.
"You mean, when are Charles and I going to make public the true state of affairs? When are we going to part before the world?" The old lady nodded acquiescence. "Well, that will be when the strike is over, and Charles's business troubles are settled—not before."
"If this sort of thing keeps on," Mrs. Delancy announced, with another access of self-pity, "your Uncle Jim and I probably will be parted by that time, too!"
"Nonsense!" Cicily jeered, smitten to sudden compunction for her part in causing distress of mind to the woman whom she really loved and honored. "Why, Auntie, if you were to leave Uncle Jim, whom would he have to bully? Pooh, dear, you and he'll never part."
Again, the old lady's thoughts veered from herself.
"But, Cicily," she ventured, "you're doing your best to prolong the strike. You're actually giving those women money, I know. Yesterday, when I called to see you, I saw the stub in your chequebook, which was lying open on the desk in your boudoir. I didn't mean to pry, but I couldn't help seeing it."
"Well, I'm not letting them starve," was the unashamed admission.
"Cicily," Mrs. Delancy said, with an abrupt transition from one phase of the subject under consideration to another, "about this matter of you and Charles separating, I have a suspicion that you are very much like that highly improper young woman in the French story, who was going to live with her lover as long as the geranium lasted. And you're going to live in the house with Charles while his troubles continue. And that improper young woman used to get up in the night, every night, to water the geranium, secretly. And you are providing the strikers with food, to prolong the strike. Humph! You don't want to go." Cicily blushed a little, but attempted no reply. "You're in love with him—you know you are!"
The young wife's reserve broke down a little before the keen glance that accompanied the words.
"I—oh, I'm interested in his spiritual development," she stammered, weakly. "Anyhow," she added defensively, "he—doesn't know it!"