"It's lovely here," Sidney said. "If only things would go right! You're the most perfect person in the world, Harry. I ought to be quite happy being here with you, but I want somebody else. I'm wanting him rather badly just at present."
"Well, you're everything you ought to be, but I want somebody else too," he said.
He rose impulsively and leant against the wall of the little terrace with one arm resting on it, and looked down at her. "I've thought I'd tell you for some time," he said. "I want to tell somebody. I can't tell Jane; she's too young. But you're in the same boat as I am; you'll understand. And we're friends too, aren't we?--always have been."
She had appeared startled at his announcement, but her face was soft as he finished. "Oh, yes, we're friends," she said. "I'm so glad you've told me, Harry. Do you know I've wondered sometimes whether there was somebody. You so often look--well, you look like I feel. You're enjoying yourself, but there's somebody you're thinking of all the time who isn't there. Do tell me about it."
He told her about his meeting with Viola on the moor, and how they had seen one another constantly afterwards and loved one another. Sidney's eyes were kind as she listened, but there was a little frown of puzzlement on her face. It was to be supposed that she wanted to "place" this lovely girl who had come to Harry as a revelation when he had been only a boy, and whom he adored still. He had told her nothing about her so far, except that her father was an artist and they had been holiday-making at Royd. There were many questions she wanted to ask.
"Have you got a photograph of her, Harry?" was the first that she asked. She wanted to satisfy herself that he was not idealizing somebody not worthy of him.
Half unwillingly he took his case out of his pocket, and Viola's photograph out of it. "It isn't as beautiful as she is," he said, "but it's like her in some ways."
Sidney took the card and looked at it for a long time. It was of Viola as Harry had first known her, young and sweet and untroubled.
"She's very lovely," she said, slowly. Then she looked up at him with a smile. "I'm so glad, Harry. I shouldn't like to think of you in love with somebody who wasn't like that. But I think she'd have to be, for you to fall in love with her. Have you seen her since?"