“Can I come in?”
“Of course,” said Clytie. “Why do you ask? We have been expecting you ever so long. In fact we have kept tea waiting for you.”
He put down his hat and stick, nodded as usual to Winifred, and advanced, through force of later habit, with outstretched hand, to Clytie. She laid her fingers in his slowly, looked up at him from her chair by the stove, and laughed.
“You forget I am no longer a visitor, Kent,” she said rebukingly.
“Only this once, then,” he answered, “to welcome you back among us.”
“Where have you learned to make pretty speeches?” asked Clytie.
She was pleased with the words and gave his hand a sudden pressure.
Kent brought a chair up to where Clytie and Winifred were sitting, tried to talk lightly, and failed. A silence came over the little party. Tea caused a distraction, and they fell to discussing indifferent subjects, odds and ends of gossip, but in a desultory fashion that each found strange. At last Clytie rose, cut the Gordian knot in her impulsive way.
“I am going to do one or two things in the sitting-room,” she said. “You two have a talk until I come back.”
Kent opened the door for her. On the threshold she turned and whispered to him: “Talk to Winifred a little. You will do each other good.”