Of course my intimacy with my dear Betty continued unbroken. If
the unmarried Betty had a fault, it was a certain sweet
truculence, a pretty self-assertiveness which sometimes betrayed
intolerance of human foibles. Her widowhood had, in a subtle way,
softened these little angularities of her spiritual contour. And
bodily, the curves of her slim figure had become more rounded. She
was no longer the young Diana of a year ago. The change into the
gracious woman who had passed through the joy and the sorrow of
life was obvious even to me, to whom it had been all but
imperceptibly gradual. After a while she rarely spoke of her
husband. The name of Leonard Boyce was never mentioned between us.
With her as with me, the weeks ate up the uneventful days and the
months the uneventful weeks. In her humdrum life the falling away
of Mrs. Tufton loomed catastrophic.
For four months Mrs. Tufton shone splendid as the wife of the
British warrior. The Wellingsford Hospital rang with her praises
and glistened with her scrubbing brush. She was the Admirable
Crichton of the institution. What with men going off to the war
and women going off to make munitions, there were never-ending
temporary gaps in the staff.
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