Alicia looked at her as they might have looked, across the desert, at a
mirage of the Promised Land.
"Then after all he has prevailed," she said.
"Who?"
"Hamilton Bradley."
Hilda laughed--the laugh was full and light and spontaneous, as if all
the training of the notes of her throat came unconsciously to make it
beautiful.
"How you will hold me to my _metier_," she said. "Hamilton Bradley has
given up trying."
"Then----"
"Then think! Be clever. Be very clever."
Alicia dropped her head in the joined length of her hands. A turquoise
on one of them made them whiter, more transparent than usual. Presently
she drew her face up from her clinging fingers and searched the other
woman with eyes that nevertheless refused confirmation for their
astonishment.
"Well?" said Hilda.
"I can think of no one--there _is_ no one--except--oh, it's too absurd!
Not Stephen--poor dear Stephen!"
The faintest shadow drifted across Hilda's face, as if for an instant
she contemplated a thing inscrutable. Then the light came back, dashed
with a gravity, a gentleness.
"I admit the absurdity. Stephen--poor dear Stephen. How odd it seems,"
she went on, while Alicia gazed, "the announcement of it--like a thing
born.
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