“But, Conchie, it’s not being bad to be unhappy—”
“No, darling; and goodness knows I’m unhappy enough. But I suppose it’s wrong to try to console myself — in the way I have. You must think so, I know; but I can’t live without affection, and Miles is so understanding, so tender...”
Miles Dawnly, then — Two or three times Nan had wondered — had noticed things which seemed to bespeak a tender intimacy; but she had never been sure... The blood rushed to her forehead. As she listened to Conchita she was secretly transposing her friend’s words to her own use. “Oh, I know, I know, Conchie—”
Lady Dick lifted her head quickly, and looked straight into her friend’s eyes. “You know — ?”
“I mean, I can imagine... how hard it must be not to...”
There was a long silence. Annabel was conscious that Conchita was waiting for some word of solace — material or sentimental, or if possible both; but again a paralyzing constraint descended on her. In her girlhood no one had ever spoken to her of events or emotions below the surface of life, and she had not yet acquired words to express them. At last she broke out with sudden passion: “Conchie — it’s all turned out a dreadful mistake, hasn’t it?”
“A dreadful mistake — you mean my marriage?”
“I mean all our marriages. I don’t believe we’re any of us really made for this English life. At least I suppose not, for they seem to take so many things for granted here that shock us and make us miserable; and then they’re horrified by things we do quite innocently — like that silly reel last night.”
“Oh — you’ve been hearing about the reel, have you? I saw the old ladies putting their heads together on the sofa.”
“If it’s not that it’s something else. I sometimes wonder—” She paused again, struggling for words. “Conchie, if we just packed up and went home to live, would they really be able to make us come back here, as my mother- in-law says? Perhaps I could cable to father for our passage-money—”
She broke off, perceiving that her suggestion had aroused no response. Conchita threw herself back in her armchair, her eyes wide with an unfeigned astonishment. Suddenly she burst out laughing.
“You little darling! Is that your panacea? Go back to Saratoga and New York — to the Assemblies and the Charity balls? Do you really imagine you’d like that better?”
“I don’t know... Don’t you, sometimes?”
“Never! Not for a single minute!” Lady Dick continued to gaze up laughingly at her friend. She seemed to have forgotten her personal troubles in the vision of this grotesque possibility. “Why, Nan, have you forgotten those dreary endless summers at the Grand Union, and the Opera boxes sent on off-nights by your father’s business friends, and the hanging round, fishing for invitations to the Assem