Why not wait unless you hear
again more definitely?"
The annoying part of a specious argument is that there's always some
truth in it, and it seems like kind advice from wise friends!
Anyhow, I _did_ wait. Julian made no further appeal to me, and I felt
sure that he said nothing to Dierdre. If he had taken her into his
confidence, I should have known by her manner; because, from the
shut-up, night-flower of a girl that she was, she has rather
pathetically opened out for me into a daylight flower. All this since
she came of her own free will and told me of the scene in the chill
boarding house _salon_ at Soissons. I used to think her as secret as the
grave--and deeper. She used to make me "creep" as if a mouse ran over
_mine_, by the way her eyes watched me: still as a cat's looking into
the fire. If we had to shake hands, she used to present me with a limp
little bunch of cold fingers, which made me long to ask what the deuce
she wanted me to do with them? Now, because I'm Brian's sister, and
because I'm human enough to love her love of him, the flower-part of her
nature sheds perfume and distils honey for me: the cat-part purrs; the
girl-part warms. The creature actually deigns to like me! It could not
now conceal its anxiety for Brian and Brian's kith and kin, if it knew
what Julian knows.
I waited until our last day at Amiens, and Father Beckett, Brian, and
Sirius are back from the British front. Perhaps I forgot to tell you
that Sirius went.
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