She was infinitely glad of his counsel with regard
to Coppertop, who was growing to the age when the
want of a father—of a man’s broad
outlook and a man’s restraining hand—became
an acute lack in a boy’s life. And to Gillian,
who had gallantly faced the world alone since the day
when death had abruptly ended her “year of utter
happiness,” it was inexpressibly sweet to be
once more shielded and helped in all the big and little
ways in which a man—even if he was only
a staunch man-friend—can shield and help
a woman.
It seemed as though Dan Storran always contrived to
interpose his big person betwixt her and the sharp
corners of life, and she began to wonder, with a faint,
indefinable dread, what must become of their friendship
when Magda returned to Friars’ Holm. Feeling
as he did towards the dancer, it would be impossible
for him to come there any more, and somehow a snatched
hour here and there—a lunch together, or
a motor-spin into the country—would be a
very poor substitute for his almost daily visits to
the old Queen Anne house tucked away behind its high
walls at Hampstead.
Once she broached the subject to him rather diffidently.
“My dear”—he had somehow dropped
into the use of the little term of endearment, and
Gillian found that she liked it and knew that she would
miss it if it were suddenly erased from his speech—“my
dear, why cross bridges till we come to them?
Perhaps, when the time comes, there’ll be no
bridge to cross.”
Gillian glanced at him swiftly.
“Do you mean that she—that you’re
feeling less bitter towards her, Dan?” she asked
eagerly.
He smiled down at her whimsically.
“I don’t quite know. But I know one
thing—it’s very difficult to be a
lot with you and keep one’s anger strictly up
to concert pitch.”
Gillian made no answer. She was too wise—with
that intuitive wisdom of woman—to force
the pace. If Dan were beginning to relent ever
so little towards Magda—why, then, her
two best friends might yet come together in comradeship
and learn to forget the bitter past. The gentle
hand of Time would be laid on old wounds and its touch
would surely bring healing. But Gillian would
no more have thought of trying to hasten matters than
she would have tried to force open the close-curled
petals of a flower in bud.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE RETURN
Magda slipped through the tall doorway in the wall
which marked the abode of the Sisters of Penitence
and stood once more on the pavement of the busy street.
The year was over, and just as once before the clicking
of the latch had seemed to signify the end of everything,
so now it sounded a quite different note—of
new beginnings, of release—freedom!
Three months prior to the completion of her allotted
span at the sisterhood Magda had had a serious attack
of illness. The hard and rigorous life had told
upon her physically, while the unaccustomed restrictions,
the constant obedience exacted, had gone far towards
assisting in the utter collapse of nerves already frayed
by the strain of previous happenings.
