She laughed joyously, though she was very near crying.
‘I have never been able to go to Rome—or Athens—never!’ he said, in a low voice, as he sat down again at his table. All the thwarted hopes, all the sordid cares of years were in the quiet words.
‘Well, now you’re going!’ said Connie, shyly. ‘Oh, that would be ripping! You’ll promise me that—you must, please!’
Silence again. She approached Nora, timidly.
‘Nora!’
Nora rose. Her face was stained with tears.
‘It’s all wrong,’ she said heavily—‘it’s all wrong. But—I give in. What I said was a lie. There is nothing else in the world that we could possibly do.’
And she rushed out of the room without another word. Connie looked wistfully after her. Nora’s pain in receiving had stirred in her the shamefaced distress in giving that lives in generous souls. ‘Why should I have more than they?’
She stole out after Nora. Ewen Hooper was left staring at the letter from his bankers, and trying to collect his thoughts. Connie’s voice was still in his ears. It had all the sweetness of his dead sister’s.
Connie was reading in her own room before dinner. She had shut herself up there, feeling rather battered by the emotions of the afternoon, when she heard a knock that she knew was Nora’s.