Sydney had by this time made up her mind that their future must not be devastated by the descent upon them of Ronald. She looked about her undecidedly, not certain whether to say, ‘This is very generous of him,’ with irony, or, without irony but with a display of emotion sure to be distasteful, ‘Oh, this is lovely for you; I am ever so glad,’ or ‘It will be interesting to see you together,’ with an implication of detachment and of relegating her friend to maternity. She could not guess to which of these observations Mrs Kerr would be likely to react most desirably, and she felt herself embarrassed by a lack of insight into her friend’s personality of which she had always been conscious, but which had till now added charm to their intercourse. Now that she might have to come to grips with the hypothetical mother in Mrs Kerr, she realized that she was powerless to estimate the force and scope of that relationship of being to being, from consideration of which, as something out of proportion with life as she saw it, she had always withheld herself.

Mrs Kerr, her hands behind her head, gazed delightedly at the future. ‘How very nice,’ she laughed, ‘how very nice and amusing … Oh, no, don’t laugh like that, Sydney; why should it seem funny to you? It’s very natural, only it’s so funny that we – he and I – never seem to have happened to be together in a place where there was nothing to look at and no one to visit and nowhere to go. So that I suppose one might almost say we had never been together … It is absurd for me to laugh,’ she went on, in a glow of speculation, ‘but I’m so touched; it is so ridiculously touching of him. Fancy him writing like that and wanting to come from Dresden … I wonder where he will sleep: we must find him somewhere to sleep … I think that will be all right, don’t you, Sydney?’

‘Have I been very dense?’ asked Sydney in a tone strange to herself. ‘I do not even seem to have realized you missed him, or thought of him much, or would be glad if he came.’

‘But I suppose,’ said Mrs Kerr, looking back at the past in surprise, ‘that I didn’t realize it either.’

‘Has it been lonely and dull? They all said it must be lonely and dull for you, but I never ——’

‘Oh no, Sydney dear. You’ve made such a difference.’

‘Have I?’ Sydney said hungrily. Mrs Kerr nodded; she was enclosed in her thoughts, but this gleam of affection emboldened Sydney to ask, with a desperate directness, ‘And you do want him now – you are fearfully glad?’

‘Sydney, you really are too clever sometimes to understand me. Can’t I be glad?’