“You would have hated me, were it not I....”
She shook her head: “Philip might have kissed me. How should I know?”
I smiled. “There is no hurry, dear. Wait. I shall be patient. Wait.”
She hid her face a moment in her hands. And lifting them again, her eyes laughed hard and strong in her fragile face.
“Oh, patience! Bother patience! Why should we wait? Why can’t we know now? I want to know. If Philip were only here, I’d know soon enough. The others don’t count. Really ... how wonderfully simple when there are only two. And you call for patience. Timid! I’ll phone for Philip. Yes, I will. If he’s home, I’ll phone and I’ll go over there: or have him come here quick.... You really should meet him.” Her smile was above malice. “And I’ll know perhaps, just if I look at him.”
She danced toward the door. There was a knock that stopped her. She moved slowly, suddenly transfigured, and turned the knob. A maid stood hesitant.
“Miss Fayn, it’s something urgent, Miss. Your father would like to speak to you just a minute.”
Mildred looked at me. There was a pallor over the bloom of her cheeks. Her eyes still danced, unknowing, within an invading pallor. I was alone.
A stillness lay within the room that had rung and sung with the dancing laughter of Mildred. Mildred was gone: and someone else is here! Who is here, blighting this room? I stand and feel a horror rise from my loins like a gray cloud ... up, up my sides it crawls: lifting my hair it passes. I forced myself to look over each shoulder: nothing. It is gone. What is it that was here and that I have not seen and that I felt I knew? A foul dark mass in the shrine of Mildred’s room. But the horror that scudded through me is away. Thoughts come. Good thoughts. Chasing all others.—Mildred is mine, is mine! And she is wonderful beyond my wonder.