"Why? Why, dear me, I don't know. She probably never
thought of it."
Hilda bit her lip. "I don't know what made me say that. I didn't mean to
interrupt. Go on please, and tell me how it was."
"Well, it was like that. Almost as if he were there. In a way, he really
is there. She never lets him go. It's the most beautiful and dignified
sorrow I've ever known. It's so beautiful that it has its compensations,
I should think. Its very completeness is a compensation. It gives her
a fixed star to steer by. She doesn't drift. We sat there evening after
evening in the quiet of that magically haunted room, and watched the
sunset burn on the river, and felt him. Felt him with a difference, of
course."
Hilda leaned forward, her elbow on her knee, her chin on her hand. "With
a difference? Because of her, you mean?"
Wilson's brow wrinkled. "Something like that, yes. Of course, as
time goes on, to her he becomes more and more their simple personal
relation."
Hilda studied the droop of the Professor's head intently. "You didn't
altogether like that? You felt it wasn't wholly fair to him?"
Wilson shook himself and readjusted his glasses. "Oh, fair enough. More
than fair. Of course, I always felt that my image of him was just a
little different from hers. No relation is so complete that it can
hold absolutely all of a person. And I liked him just as he was; his
deviations, too; the places where he didn't square."
Hilda considered vaguely. "Has she grown much older?" she asked at last.
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