"Sabine is perfectly crushed with all this," she went on. "I have just
left her. She does not know what you mean to do, but I am sure I can
guess. You mean to give her back to Mr. Arranstoun--and it will be much
better. She has always been in love with him, I believe, and would never
have agreed to try to arrange for a divorce if she had not been awfully
jealous about Daisy Van der Horn. I remember now telling her quite
innocently of the reports about them in Paris before we went to England,
and now that I come to think of it, I noticed she was rather spiteful
over it at the time."
Henry did not answer, so she continued, in a frank, matter-of-fact way:
"You can imagine what a strange character Sabine has when I tell you, in
all these years of our intimate friendship she never has told me a word
of her story until just now. She was keeping it all in to herself--I
can't think why."
Henry did speak at last, but his words came slowly. "She wanted to
forget, poor little girl, and that was the best way to bury it all out
of sight."
"There you are quite wrong," returned Moravia, now seated upon her
footstool again, very close, with her elbows propped on Henry's knees,
while she still held his hands and intermittently caressed them with her
cheek. "That is the way to keep hurts burning and paining forever,
fostering them all in the dark--it is much better to speak about them
and let the sun get in on them and take all their sorrow away. That is
why I would not let you be by yourself now, dear friend, as I suppose
one of your reserved countrymen would have done. I just determined to
make you talk about it, and to realize that there are lots of lovely
other things to comfort you, and that you are not all alone."
Henry was strangely touched at her kind common sense; he already felt
better and not so utterly crushed out with despair. He told her how
sweet and good she was and what a true, unselfish woman--but Moravia
shook her head.
"I am not a bit; it is purely interested, because I am so awfully fond
of you myself. I _love_ to pet you--there!" and she laughed softly, so
happy to see that she had been able even to make this slight effect, for
she saw the color had come back in a measure to his face, and her keen
brain told her that this was the right tack to go upon--not to be too
serious or show any sentiment, but just to use a sharp knife and cut
round all the wound and then pour honey and balm into it herself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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