to-morrow I suppose it would hardly affect us more
than the death of any of the men who had tea here yesterday."

"Milly!" said Christina. She put down her cup.

"Would it?" Milly insisted. "Would you really mind more?"

"Your husband--my child!" This elder-sister mode of address was often
Christina's.

"Why should a husband one hasn't been able to live with count for as
much as a friend one is glad to see?"

"Because he has counted for so much."

"But, Christina, you can't deny that you would hardly be sorry, and that
you would not expect me to be sorry--only solemn."

"I should expect you to be both."

"Sorry because a man I have no affection for--a man I have almost
hated--is dead?"

"Yes; if only for those reasons; and that it should be only for those
reasons is what you meant when you said: 'Poor Dick,'" Christina
demonstrated with an air of finality that showed her displeased with
what she felt to be an unbecoming levity.

Milly was thinner, paler; Christina noticed that, though she did not
notice how often she returned to the subject of her husband's danger and
the irony of her own indifference to it. And Milly's listless moods
followed one other so closely this winter as to become almost permanent.
She was evidently bored. More and more frequently, when they were
talking over their _tete-a-tete_ tea, the very dearest hour of the day,
Christina saw that Milly did not hear her. After these four years of
comprehension and mutual forbearance the apparent indifference or
preoccupation could not, at first, seriously disturb her; hurt her it
always did. Picking up a book she would read and cease to talk. The mood
always passed the sooner for not being recognised, and Milly would come
out of the cloud, unaware of it, sunnier, sweeter, more responsive than
before. But this winter she did not come out. That she should be so
bored, so apathetic, began to disturb as well as to hurt Christina.
There came a quick pulsing of fear; did some new attachment account for
it? Her mind, in a swift, flame-like running around the circle of
possibilities, saw them all as impossibilities, and put the fear away.

One day, taking Milly's face between her hands, yet feeling, strangely,
a sudden shyness that made the complete confession of her alarms too
difficult, she asked her if she were unhappy.

"Unhappy, dear Christina? Why should I be?" Milly put an affectionate
arm about her friend's neck.

"But are you? Is there any