“Say that again!” Yootha interrupted excitedly. “Do you really mean it? Do you really think that——”
“Well, go on—think that he really loves you? I don’t merely think it. I know it.”
“How? Has he told you?”
“Oh, Yootha, we spoke a moment ago about people being dull. You, I think, are the most obtuse person I have ever met.”
Thus they continued to talk, and the girl, having at last fully admitted the truth, ended by baring her soul to the woman who had so long been her friend. Now, without fear or reticence, she told Cora Hartsilver that she had fallen madly in love that day at lunch at the Ritz with the wounded officer who had, during the whole meal, hardly spoken at all.
But it was at Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s “at home” afterwards, she went on to explain, when they had sat together listening to Tchaikowsky’s “None but the Weary Heart,” that the full flood of her affection had poured forth. It had poured forth in silence, for naturally she had not dared on such short acquaintanceship, to allow her feelings to betray themselves. And ever since that afternoon the pain of her love for the wounded man whom she had pitied perhaps almost as much as she loved him, had continued to increase.
While conversing the two women who were such friends had been together on a settee. Now, all at once, Cora Hartsilver became strangely silent. Yootha looked at her in surprise for some moments.
“Why, Cora, what has come over you?” she said suddenly, moving closer to her. “You are not put out at what I have told you, are you?”
“Put out? Indeed no,” and as she spoke she unconsciously laid her hand upon the girl’s and held it rather tightly. “No, I was only thinking—it was only something that——”
She caught her breath, and Yootha heard her sob.