“Justine!”
Again she checked him with a silencing motion. “Please tell me just what has happened.”
“Not now—there’s too much else to say. And nothing matters except that I m with you.”
“But Mr. Langhope———”
“He asks you to come. You’re to see Cicely tomorrow.”
Her lower lip trembled a little, and a tear flowed over and hung on her lashes.
“But what does all that matter now? We’re together after this horrible year,” he insisted.
She looked at him again. “But what is really changed?”
“Everything—everything! Not changed, I mean—just gone back.”
“To where. . . we were. . . before?” she whispered; and he whispered back: “To where we were before.”
There was a scraping of chairs on the floor, and with a sense of release Amherst saw that the colloquy in the window was over.
The two visitors, gathering their wraps about them, moved slowly across the room, still talking to the matron in excited undertones, through which, as they neared the threshold, the younger woman’s staccato again broke out.
[ 617 ]
