It was Mrs. Travis.  Cecily hesitated, but decided to receive her.

Though the intercourse between them had been resumed, it was with a restraint on both sides that seemed to forbid the prospect of friendship.  They had met two or three times only; once it was in the Denyers’ house, and on that occasion Cecily had renewed her acquaintance with the family and sat a little with Madeline.  Interest in each other they certainly felt, but not in like degrees; Mrs. Travis showed herself more strongly attracted to Cecily than Cecily was to her, as it had been from the first.  That this was the attraction of simple liking and goodwill, Cecily could never quite convince herself.  Mrs. Travis always seemed to be studying her, and sometimes in a spirit of curiosity that was disagreeable.  But at the same time she was so manifestly in need of sympathetic companionship, and allowed such sad glimpses into her own wrecked life, that Cecily could not reject her, nor even feel with actual coldness.

“Have you been home long?” the visitor asked, as they shook hands.

“A few hours only.”

“Indeed?  You have arrived to-day?”

They sat down.  Mrs. Travis fixed her eyes on Cecily.

“I hardly hoped to find you.”

“I should have let you know that I was back.”

Their conversations were accustomed to begin awkwardly, constrainedly.  They never spoke of ordinary topics, and each seemed to wait for a suggestion of the other’s mood.  At present Cecily was uneasy under her visitor’s gaze, which was stranger and more inquisitive than usual.

“So you have left the Denyers’?” she said.

“From whom did you hear?”

“I have just had a note from Zillah Denyer, about Madeline.  She merely mentions that you are no longer there.”

“I ought to go and see them; but I can’t to-day.”

“Have you been in London all the time?”

“Yes.—­I have gone back to my husband.”

It was spoken in a matter-of-fact tone (obviously assumed) which was very incongruous with the feeling it excited in Cecily.  She could not hear the announcement without an astonished look.

“Of your own free will?” she asked, in a diffident voice.  “Oh yes.  That is to say, he persuaded me.”

Their eyes met, and Cecily had an impulse of distrust, more decided than she had ever felt.  She could not find anything to say, and by keeping silence she hoped the interview might be shortened.

“You are disposed to feel contempt for me,” Mrs. Travis added, after a few moments.

“No one can judge another in such things.  It is your own affair, Mrs. Travis.”

“Yes, but you despise me for my weakness, naturally you do.  Had you no suspicion that it would end again in this way?”

“I simply believed what you told me.”

“That nothing would induce me to return to him.  That is how women talk, you know.  We are all very much the same.”