Her face softened.
“I see. I’ve been unjust.”
She pressed her hands together.
“It’s so cruel, so unfair, so meaningless. After all Shirley had been through. To have only three years of happiness.”
He did not answer at once, just sat watching her.
“Forgive me, you loved your sister very much?”
“More than anyone in the world.”
“And yet, for three years you never saw her. They invited you, repeatedly, but you never came?”
“It was difficult to leave my work here, to find someone to replace me.”
“That, perhaps; but it could have been managed. Why didn’t you want to go?”
“I did. I did!”
“But you had some reason for not going?”
“I’ve told you. My work here-”
“Do you love your work so much?”
“Love it? No.” She seemed surprised. “But it’s worth-while work. It answers a need. These children were in a category that was not catered for. I think-I really think-that what I’m doing is useful.”
She spoke with an earnestness that struck him as odd.
“Of course it’s useful. I don’t doubt it.”
“This place was in a mess, an incredible mess. I’ve had a terrific job getting it on its feet again.”
“You’re a good administrator. I can see that. You’ve got personality. You can manage people. Yes, I’m sure that you’ve done a much-needed and useful job here. Has it been fun?”
“Fun?”
Her startled eyes looked at him.
“It’s not a word in a foreign language. It could be fun-if you loved them.”
“Loved who?”
“The children.”
She said slowly and sadly:
“No, I don’t love them-not really-not in the way you mean. I wish I did. But then-
“But then it would be pleasure, not duty. That’s what you were thinking, wasn’t it? And duty is what you must have.”
“Why should you think that?”
“Because it’s written all over you. Why, I wonder?”
He got up suddenly and walked restlessly up and down.
“What have you been doing all your life? It’s so baffling, so extraordinary, to know you so well and to know nothing at all about you. It’s-it’s heart-rending. I don’t know where to begin.
His distress was so real that she could only stare.
“I must seem quite mad to you. You don’t understand. How should you? But I came to this country to meet you.”
“To bring me Shirley’s things?”
He waved an impatient hand.
“Yes, yes, that’s all I thought it was. To do an errand that Richard hadn’t got the heart to do. I’d no idea-not the faintest-that it would be you.”
He leaned across the desk towards her.
“Listen, Laura, you’ve got to know some time-you might as well know now. Years ago, before I started on my mission, I saw three scenes. In my father’s family there’s a tradition of second sight. I suppose I have it too. I saw three things as clearly as I see you now. I saw an office desk, and a big-jowled man behind it. I saw a window looking out on pine trees against the sky and a man with a round pink face and an owlish expression. In due course I met and lived through those scenes. The man behind the big desk was the multi-millionaire who financed our religious crusade. Later I lay in a sanatorium bed, and I looked at those snow-covered pine trees against the sky, and a doctor with a round pink face stood by my bed and told me that my life and mission as an evangelist were over.
“The third thing I saw was you. Yes, Laura, you. As distinctly as I see you now. Younger than you are now, but with the same sadness in your eyes, the same tragedy in your face. I didn’t see you in any particular setting, but very faintly, like an insubstantial back-cloth, I saw a church, and after that a background of leaping flames.”
“Flames?”
She was startled.
“Yes, Were you ever in a fire?”
“Once. When I was a child. But the church-what kind of a church? A Catholic church, with Our Lady in a blue cloak?”
“Nothing so definite as that. No colour-or lights. Cold grey, and-yes, a font. You were standing by a font.”