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 I know William has feelings about these matters that make it very difficult for him to do anything.”

“Because he’s fearfully sensitive about other people’s feelings,” said Cassandra. “The idea that he could upset Aunt Maggie or Uncle Trevor would make him ill for weeks.”

This interpretation of what she was used to call William’s conventionality was new to Katharine. And yet she felt it now to be the true one.

“Yes, you’re right,” she said.

“And then he worships beauty. He wants life to be beautiful in every part of it. Have you ever noticed how exquisitely he finishes everything? Look at the address on that envelope. Every letter is perfect.”

Whether this applied also to the sentiments expressed in the letter, Katharine was not so sure; but when William’s solicitude was spent upon Cassandra it not only failed to irritate her, as it had done when she was the object of it, but appeared, as Cassandra said, the fruit of his love of beauty.

“Yes,” she said, “he loves beauty.”

“I hope we shall have a great many children,” said Cassandra. “He loves children.”

This remark made Katharine realize the depths of their intimacy better than any other words could have done; she was jealous for one moment, but the next she was humiliated. She had known William for years, and she had never once guessed that he loved children. She looked at the queer glow of exaltation in Cassandra’s eyes, through which she was beholding the true spirit of a human being, and wished that she would go on talking about William for ever. Cassandra was not unwilling to gratify her. She talked on. The morning slipped away. Katharine scarcely changed her position on the edge of her father’s writing-table, and Cassandra never opened the “History of England.”