“Wondered? Wondered what, in God’s name?”
She spoke wearily. “You didn’t know Sean, of course. Neither did I, I suppose.”
“What do you mean?” I cried again, with an intolerable heaviness in me, remembering Lib.
“Religion and sensuality: they go together often, don’t they? I thought that if I recognized that—streak in Sean I might disregard it and it would be like a thing that never was. If that had been all. . . .”
I caught up the silence. “You can never make me believe—that Miss Mertoun—”
“Oh, of course not. She wasn’t like the others. . . . She hasn’t offended me; I’m the offender. . . .”
“Paula, you mustn’t stop. Tell me what you mean.”
“It’s beastly of me, I suppose . . . especially when someone else . . . I wonder why it is we confide in people we half-know instead of our closest friends. But it’s horrible to have a thing pent up in your brain . . . like a deadly growth.”
“Tell me, Paula.”
“If I hadn’t come along, Millicent would be Mrs. Cosgrove now. It sounds—almost grotesque, doesn’t it? But there it was, a fact that months and even years couldn’t kill. I never had the least inkling of it—oh, Millicent’s been a loyal friend to me—until we were all here and it was—too late. Millicent came, you see, since if she didn’t—I would never have had a Bidding Feast without Millicent, and she knew it. But I never guessed . . . until she told me, after midnight, the night you came.”