"I think you are advising me to be happy," she said.
"I am advising no such thing," I answered. "I am merely pointing out
that you run the risk of being more unhappy than you are. My
visits--or rather the news I bring you--are too important to you.
You make me feel as if it were the only event of the year--to you
who have always had such an interesting life of your own."
"I have not had a life of my own since I was twenty," she returned.
It was at twenty she had married.
"Then think of Julian," I said, annoyed not only at my own clumsiness
but at the absence of anything of Anne's old heroic spirit.
"For his sake, at least, you must keep your head. Why, my dear woman,
one look at your face, grown as desperate as it sometimes appears now,
would ruin Julian with the whole world. Even I, knowing the whole
story, would find it hard to forgive him if you should fail to
continue to be the splendid triumphant creature whom we know you
were designed to be."
She gave me a long queer look, which meant something tremendous.
Evidently my words had made an impression.
They had, but not just the one I intended.
III
One of the first people I always saw on returning was Julian. How
often he thought of Anne I do not know, but he spoke of her with the
greatest effort.
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