"I must be getting back to my overhanging warehouse," said the man.
"They've turned disgracefully strict."

Mrs. Wilcox also rose.

"Oh, but come upstairs for a little. Miss Quested plays. Do you like
MacDowell? Do you mind his only having two noises? If you must really
go, I'll see you out. Won't you even have coffee?"

They left the dining-room closing the door behind them, and as Mrs.
Wilcox buttoned up her jacket, she said: "What an interesting life you
all lead in London!"

"No, we don't," said Margaret, with a sudden revulsion. "We lead the
lives of gibbering monkeys. Mrs. Wilcox--really--We have something quiet
and stable at the bottom. We really have. All my friends have. Don't
pretend you enjoyed lunch, for you loathed it, but forgive me by coming
again, alone, or by asking me to you."

"I am used to young people," said Mrs. Wilcox, and with each word she
spoke the outlines of known things grew dim. "I hear a great deal of
chatter at home, for we, like you, entertain a great deal. With us it
is more sport and politics, but--I enjoyed my lunch very much, Miss
Schlegel, dear, and am not pretending, and only wish I could have joined
in more. For one thing, I'm not particularly well just to-day. For
another, you younger people move so quickly that it dazes me. Charles
is the same, Dolly the same. But we are all in the same boat, old and
young. I never forget that."

They were silent for a moment. Then, with a newborn emotion, they shook
hands. The conversation ceased suddenly when Margaret re-entered the
dining-room; her friends had been talking over her new friend, and had
dismissed her as uninteresting.

CHAPTER X

Several days passed.

Was Mrs. Wilcox one of the unsatisfactory people--there are many of
them--who dangle intimacy and then withdraw it? They evoke our interests
and affections, and keep the life of the spirit dawdling round them.
Then they withdraw. When physical passion is involved, there is a
definite name for such behaviour--flirting--and if carried far enough
it is punishable by law. But no law--not public opinion even--punishes
those who coquette with friendship, though the dull ache that they
inflict, the sense of misdirected effort and exhaustion, may be as
intolerable. Was she one of these?

Margaret feared so at first, for, with a Londoner's impatience, she
wanted everything to be settled up immediately. She mistrusted the
periods of quiet that are essential to true growth.