Reassured, the party returned to the kitchen.

iii

Alf could not now wait to sit down to supper; but he drank a glass of beer, after getting it down for himself and rather humorously illustrating how Pa’s designs must have been frustrated.  He then, with a quick handshake with Jenny, hurried away.

“I’ll let you out,” Emmy said.  There were quick exchanged glances.  Jenny was left alone in the kitchen for two or three minutes until Emmy returned, humming a little self-consciously, and no longer pale.

“Quite a commotion,” said Emmy, with assumed ease.

Jenny was looking at her, and Jenny’s heart felt as though it were bursting.  She had never in her life known such a sensation of guilt—­guilt at the suppression of a vital fact.  Yet above that sense of guilt, which throbbed within all her consciousness, was a more superficial concern with the happenings of the moment.

“Yes,” Jenny said.  “And....  Had you been in long?” she asked quickly.

“Only a minute.  We found him like that.  We didn’t come straight home.”

“Oh,” said Jenny, significantly, though her heart was thudding.  “You didn’t come straight home.”  Emmy’s colour rose still higher.  She faltered slightly, and tears appeared in her eyes.  She could not explain.  Some return of her jealousy, some feeling of what Jenny would “think,” checked her.  The communication must be made by other means than words.  The two sisters eyed each other.  They were very near, and Emmy’s lids were the first to fall.  Jenny stepped forward, and put a protective arm round her; and as if Emmy had been waiting for that she began smiling and crying at one and the same moment.

“Looks to me as if....”  Jenny went on after this exchange.

“I’m sorry I was a beast,” Emmy said.  “I’m as different as anything now.”

“You’re a dear!” Jenny assured her.  “Never mind about what you said.”

It was an expansive moment.  Their hearts were charged.  To both the evening had been the one poignant moment of their lives, an evening to provide reflections for a thousand other evenings.  And Emmy was happy, for the first time for many days, with the thought of happy life before her.  She described in detail the events of the theatre and the walk.  She did not give an exactly true story.  It was not to be expected that she would do so.  Jenny did not expect it.  She gave indications of her happiness, which was her main object; and she gave further indications, less intentional, of her character, as no author can avoid doing.  And Jenny, immediately discounting, and in the light of her own temperament re-shaping and re-proportioning the form of Emmy’s narrative, was like the eternal critic—­apprehending only what she could personally recognise.  But both took pleasure in the tale, and both saw forward into the future a very satisfactory ending to Emmy’s romance.

“And we got back just as twelve was striking,” Emmy concluded.