Page:Later Life (1919).djvu/44

36 you how glad we should be to come back to the old terms once more."

"Bertha," said Constance, a little impatiently and wearily, "I am prepared to receive your visit, but I should really like to know what is the good of it and why you suggest it. Do let us have some sincerity . . . when there is no occasion for hypocrisy. Sometimes one has to be insincere . . . but there is no need for that between us now. We both know that our mutual sympathy, if it ever existed, is dead. We never meet except at Mamma's and we don't let her see our estrangement. Apart from that, it seems to me that things are over between us."

"So you would rather that Van Naghel and I did not come?"

"It's not for me to decide, Bertha: I shall speak about it to Van der Welcke and write you a line."

"Is that cold answer all you have to say to me, Constance?"

"Bertha, a little time ago, I was not backward in showing my affection for you all. Perhaps I asked too much in return; but, in any case, I was repulsed. And now I retire. That is all."

"Constance, you don't know how sorry we all are that the old aunts . . . spoke as they did. They are foolish old women, Constance; they are in their second childhood. Mamma had to take to