"I should not have thought there was anything noticeable," said Christina. "She was a little fagged, perhaps; but the country has already refreshed her wonderfully."
"London always does pull one down, I hate the beastly place," said Dick. And he went on: "She is being awfully nice to me. I don't remember her ever having been so nice--since, I mean, we decided that we couldn't hit it off. One would really say that she rather liked seeing me!" and Dick smiled, as if the joke were very comical.
"You have been in such danger. Milly can but feel relief." Her voice was full of an odd repression, discouragement, but Dick was altogether too innocent of any hope to be aware of discouragement or repression.
"She was worried about me? Really? That was awfully good of her," he said.
Christina was remembering that Milly had only expressed indifference as to Dick's danger.
The ensuing evening was, to Christina, uncanny in its unapparent strangeness. She and Dick were both aware of novelty and Milly was aware of none. Her cheerful kindness was as natural and spontaneous as though she had been a girl greeting a long absent brother. She questioned Dick, and, as her questions showed interest--interest and a knowledge horribly surprising to Christina--Dick talked with unusual fluency. Christina looked at them and listened to them, while Milly, leaning an arm on the table, gazed with gravely shining eyes at her husband. The arm, the eyes, the lines of the throat, were very lovely. Christina's mind fixed upon that beauty, and she wished that Milly would not lean so and look so. Milly, again, was unaware. It was Christina who was aware; Christina who was quivering with latent, unformulated consciousness. After dinner, Milly and Dick still talked; she still listened. She knew nothing about Africa.
For three or four days this was the situation; a reunited brother and sister; a friend, for the time being, necessarily incidental. Then, suddenly, the presages grew plainly ominous. Was it her own realization of loneliness, of not being needed, that so overwhelmed her? or the sense of some utter change in her darling--a change so gradual that until its accomplishment it had seemed madness to recognize it? The moment of recognition came one day, when, on going into the library, she found Dick and Milly sitting side by side at the table, their heads bent over a map; and they were not looking at the map; they were looking at each other; still like brother and sister, but such fond brother and sister, while they smiled and talked.