It seemed to me, I remember, during our hour's talk together, that Miss Leslie was one of the two or three wisest, most understanding, and sympathetic persons I had ever met. Sympathetic, she genuinely was; very gracious and interestingly melancholy, in her Belgian nurse's costume, with King Albert's decoration pinned to her breast. It seemed to me that she divined my thoughts before I uttered them; as perhaps she did--for to call them thoughts is to dignify vague sensations with a misleading name. Miss Leslie had had always, I am now aware, an instinctive response for vague sensations; she had always vibrated to them like a harp, thus surrounding herself with an odd, whispering music. A strange woman; not without nobility and force when the appropriate vague sensations played upon her. The sufferings of war had already wrung from her a wild, æolian masterpiece, more moving perhaps than a consciously ordered symphony. And Susan, though she had never so much as guessed at Susan, was one of her passions! Susan played on us both that day: though the mawkish music we made would have disgusted her--did disgust her in its final effects, as it has finally disgusted me.
What these effects were can be briefly told, but not briefly enough to comfort me. There is no second page of this record I should be so happy not to write.
Miss Leslie had long suspected, she told me, that Susan--like Viola's hypothetical sister--was pining in thought for a secret, unkind lover, and she at once accepted as a certainty my suggestion that so gallant a young aviator as Jimmy had been what "glorious Jane" always calls her "object."
"This must be kept from her, Mr. Hunt, at all costs--for the next few weeks, I mean! She's simply not strong enough yet, not poised enough, to bear it--with all the rest! It would be cruelty to tell her now, and might prove murderous. Oh, believe me, Mr. Hunt--I _know_!"
Her cocksure intensity could not fail to impress me in my present state of deadness; I listened as if to oracles. Then we conspired together.
"My lease of the villa at Mentone runs on till May," said Miss Leslie. "Susan's physically able for the journey now, I think; we must take that risk anyway. I'll get the doctors to order her down there with me, at once. She needs the change, the peace; above all--the _beauty_ of it. She's starved for beauty, poor soul! And there's the possibility of further raids, too; she mustn't in her condition be exposed to that. When she's stronger, Mr. Hunt--after she's had a few happy weeks--then I'll tell her everything, in my own way. Women can do these things, you know; they have an instinct for the right moment, the right words."