She was very thankful the interview was over. But she knew now
that she and Irene could never be the friends they had been. Friendly,
yes--but friends, no. Nor did she wish it. All winter she had felt
under her other and more serious worries, a little feeling of regret for
her lost chum. Now it was suddenly gone. Irene was not as Mrs. Elliott
would say, of the race that knew Joseph. Rilla did not say or think that
she had outgrown Irene. Had the thought occurred to her she would have
considered it absurd when she was not yet seventeen and Irene was
twenty. But it was the truth. Irene was just what she had been a year
ago--just what she would always be. Rilla Blythe's nature in that year
had changed and matured and deepened. She found herself seeing through
Irene with a disconcerting clearness--discerning under all her
superficial sweetness, her pettiness, her vindictiveness, her
insincerity, her essential cheapness. Irene had lost for ever her
faithful worshipper.
But not until Rilla had traversed the Upper Glen Road and found herself
in the moon-dappled solitude of Rainbow Valley did she fully recover her
composure of spirit. Then she stopped under a tall wild plum that was
ghostly white and fair in its misty spring bloom and laughed.
"There is only one thing of importance just now--and that is that the
Allies win the war," she said aloud. "Therefore, it follows without
dispute that the fact that I went to see Irene Howard with odd shoes and
stockings on is of no importance whatever.
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