h other's position in the matter.
By whatever steps this position had been attained, it stood clearly
defined. Both were too busy to go to lunch at Parker's Hotel; that
emerged saliently. With no words uttered on the subject, their points of
view had marched together, side by side, immeasurable miles from the
evening, three weeks ago, when one had said to the other, 'So for three
weeks we shan't have a chance of eating too much at lunch. Pity, isn't
it? I loved those lunches.'

The march of the other's point of view each accepted, silently, without
surprise. The only matter for surprise would have been the march of one
without the other. For, backwards or forwards, they had always moved
side by side.

CHAPTER VIII

BROKEN BARRIERS

'The barriers break; life opens all about us;
The faces grown so long familiar are become as words,
Each one with infinite meanings, a new world.'

HENRY BINNS.

It was hard to deny Mrs. Venables entrance; her intimacy was so
all-reaching. The Crevequers did not see how it was to be done. Betty
almost reached the conclusion that it could not be done, and echoed
Tommy's question, 'How much longer are they going to be in Naples?' In
ignorance of the answer to that, the Crevequers built meanwhile their
flimsy, pitiful wall, piling for bricks excuse upon excuse, lie upon
lie.

Over the wall Mrs. Venables swept like a wave of the sea. She saw
nothing; but, whatever she had seen, she would not have been deterred,
but the more impelled. When she did see--if ever she saw--it would be an
impression of the first order, most immensely striking.

What she at present saw was that the Crevequers had become unsociable;
three weeks had been enough to throw them so entirely back upon their
old friends and their old amusements that the new friends, with their
atmosphere so widely different, had slid to a great distance, and were
not welcomed.

'Atmosphere counts for a good deal. We have not, perhaps, made allowance
enough for the strain--for it is a strain--of stepping out of one
atmosphere into another. It takes time.'

Prudence Varley said:

'Only, when you don't step out at all, but carry your own atmosphere
about with you, the strain is less. The Crevequers have always seemed,
anyhow, to bear up under it.'

Since the Crevequers, finding the strain too great, refused to come to
the atmosphere, the atmosphere came to them. It was carried by Mrs.
Venables and Miranda;