But the oddest thing of all was her calm remark: "Of course it's quite
easy to see what will happen. Sooner or later he'll marry June. She's
quite in love with him, and he'll be with her after a while.... Do you
remember years ago you asked me what I would do with Terry in the end,
and I said I would hand him over when the right girl came along.... But
I never thought that the right girl would be June."
"You think June is the right girl?" I asked; and she answered: "I think
he will feel she is if he tries hard enough."
I forgave her for that mocking retort. I didn't tell her that already,
without trying at all, Terry had grown to see in June what, perhaps, he
had never seen in any other woman--a mirror of the future, calm and
bright with happiness. It would have been _too_ cruel to have told her
that, to have smashed her dear belief that she could have had Terry for
not much more than the asking. She has kept her word, and that counts
none the less because it wouldn't have greatly mattered if she hadn't
kept it.
We were in the midst of tea when the telegraph-boy arrived. I went out
into my small lobby, and when I came back she noticed the change in my
face; it was stupid not to have had more control of myself.
"Good news, I can see," she said.
And I stammered hazily something about a business affair that I had been
hoping would happen.... Oh, yes, _quite_ good news.
That telegram is before me now as I write ... Handed in at Oxford at
4.10 P.M. (What were they doing at Oxford? A motor excursion,
presumably.) ... Received at London, W.1. at 4.50 P.M.... And then:
"Took your advice succeeded thanks June."
VII
_Later._
I've been to bed, but I can't sleep, and I might as well continue this
as lie awake. The clock in Lincoln's Inn has just chimed two, and the
street-cleaners in Holborn are noisily busy. In a little while the
Covent Garden traffic will begin; there is never a silent minute from
midnight to dawn in this part of London. Not that it troubles me in the
least; it is happiness--excitement if you like--that is keeping me awake
to-night.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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