“And do you suppose that even then any of us would be happy? See already how everyone is changed! Millie, Henry, Aunt Aggie, you, even your father. Isn’t he always wondering now what’s come over everyone? There’s a surprised look in his eyes. And it’s I!... I!... I! It’s like a pebble in your shoe that you can’t find. I’m the pebble, and they’ll never be comfortable so long as I’m here. They’re not only threatened with losing you, they’re threatened with losing their confidence, their trust, their superstitions.” “I’m one of them,” Katherine said. “You forget that. We may be slow and stupid and unimaginative, as you say, but we _are_ fond of one another. You’re impatient, Phil. I tell you to wait ... wait!” “Wait!” He looked out to sea, where the bar of blue was now sown with white dancing feathers. “I can’t wait ... there’s something else. There’s Anna.” Katherine nodded her head as though she had known that this would come. “Ever since that day at Rafiel she’s been between us; you’ve known it as well as I. It hasn’t been quite as I’d expected. I thought perhaps that you’d be shocked. You weren’t shocked. I thought that I’d be confused myself. I haven’t been confused. You’ve wanted to know about her—anything I could tell you. You’ve simply been curious, as you might, about anyone I’d known before I met you—but the business has been this, that the more you’ve asked the more I’ve thought about her. The more she’s come back to me. It hasn’t been that I’ve wanted her, even that I’ve thought tenderly about her, only that your curiosity has revived all that life as though I were back in it all again. I’ve remembered so much that I’d forgotten.” Katherine took his hand and came close to him. “Yes. I knew that it was like that,” she said. “I knew that it was foolish of me to ask questions, to make you talk about her, and I couldn’t help myself—I knew that it was foolish, and I couldn’t help myself. And the strange thing is that I don’t suppose I’ve ever wondered about anyone whom I didn’t know in my life before. I’ve never been able to imagine people unless I had pictures or something to help me. But now—I seem to see her as though I’d known her all my days. And I’m not jealous—no, truly, truly, I’m not jealous. And yet I don’t like her—I grudge—I grudge—” She suddenly hid her face in the sleeve of his coat and her hand went up to his cheek.