talked of his mother, of business, of the war, of Lan and Myra and of anything and any one but Fidelia.
Their minds swiftly re-established an intimacy in which Alice could feel no break. When he spoke of his relations with his father and with Mr. Fuller and when he told her of his difficulties with Snelgrove and the agency, it seemed just like long ago. It seemed to her not only that she had not heard these things for four years but also that he had not talked them to any one.
"Did you talk this way with—her?" Alice asked him suddenly, one evening.
He flushed and then went white as he looked at her and answered, "Of course not."
"Why not?"
"We didn't talk this way," he replied.
"How did you? I mean, I mean I don't want to make you talk to me just this way."
"You don't; you only let me, Alice," he said. "And please keep on letting me. It's marvelous to have this again."
"It is for me," she said; but she thought, "It really can't mean so much, for we were doing this when she took him away." Alice thought: "I felt too much interest; I made myself too much like a partner in his work; she didn't do that at all and she took him away. I'll be lighter with him."
But it was no time to be light with him, when he came to her from his mother who was dying; and Alice could not dissemble the intensity of her concern in everything which affected him. She was happiest when
