about him at one time. I don’t mean I wrote him compromising letters or anything idiotic like they do in books. But I was rather keen on him once.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
“Oh! because! I don’t know exactly except that—well, you’re foolish in some ways. Just because you’re so much older than I am, you think that I—well, that I’m likely to like other people. I thought you’d be tiresome, perhaps, about me and Lawrence being friends.”
“You’re very clever at concealing things,” I said, remembering what she had told me in that room less than a week ago, and the ingenuous way she had talked.
“Yes, I’ve always been able to hide things. In a way, I like doing it.”
Her voice held a childlike ring of pleasure to it.
“But it’s quite true what I said. I didn’t know about Anne, and I wondered why Lawrence was so different, not—well, really not noticing me. I’m not used to it.”
There was a pause.
“You do understand, Len?” said Griselda anxiously.
“Yes,” I said, “I understand.”
But did I?