"Then you think," said Anikin, "that she will marry Stukely?"
Anikin remembered Stukely's conduct and was puzzled.
"I am sure," he said, "that since he has been here he has made no effort."
"Of course he didn't," she said, "He saw that it was useless. He knew at once."
"Is he that kind of man, that knows at once?"
"Yes, he's that kind of man. He saw directly; directly he saw her, and he didn't say a word. He just settled to go."
Anikin felt this was difficult to believe; all the more difficult because he wanted to believe it. Was Mrs. Roseleigh making it easy, too easy?
"But he's going back to Africa," he said.
"He will go to London first. Kathleen will not stay here much longer either. I am going soon to London, too, and I shall see Lancelot Stukely there before he goes away, and do my best. And if you see him----"
"Before he goes," she went on, "if you see him, perhaps you could help too, not by saying anything, of course, but sometimes one can help----"
"I have a dread," said Anikin, "of some explanations."
"That is just what she doesn't want--explanations, neither he nor she," said Mrs. Roseleigh. "Kathleen wants us to understand without explanations. She is praying we may understand without her having to explain to us, or without our having to explain to her. She wants to be spared all that. She has already been through such a lot. She is ashamed at appearing so contradictory. She knows I understand, but she doubts whether any one else ever could, and she does not know where to turn, nor what to do."
"And when you go to London," he asked, "will you make it all right?"
"Are you quite sure you can make it all right? I mean with Stukely, of course," he said.
"Of course," said Mrs. Roseleigh, but she knew perfectly well that he really meant all right with Kathleen.
"And you think he will marry her, and that she will marry him?" he asked one last time.
"I am quite sure of it," she said, "not at once, of course, but in time. We must give them time."
"Very well," he said. He did not feel quite sure that it was all right.
Mrs. Roseleigh divined his uncertainty and his doubts.
"You see," she said, "what happened was very complicated. She knows that ever since Lancelot arrived, she was never really herself----"