But Kent was too absorbed in his own affairs to notice the change of tone.
“Will she be engaged long?”
“Probably.”
“I wanted so much to see her.”
Winifred looked at him for a moment and then came and put her hand lightly on his shoulder.
“You seem so unhappy. Is it about Clytie? You and she have quarrelled or had some difference,—she has not told me what it is,—and I have been so grieved. If I knew, perhaps I might bring things straight.”
“Would you, Winifred?” said Kent eagerly.
“Of course. Don't I love Clytie better than anybody else—and haven't you been a good kind friend to me? I haven't asked her—nor you—why you have stopped being friends, because one shrinks from asking such questions, but I have seen it, and I have been so, so sorry.”
The gentle sympathy touched him. The realisation of the feminine had come to him of late powerfully enough to have overset his old one-sided theories. He knew the value now of a tender word from a woman, and his nature hungered for it.
“Winifred,” he said, half turning in the chair and looking up at her in his honest way, “do you think Clytie could ever care for me—not as a friend—as something nearer?”