Hushabye, watching her inquisitively, goes deliberately back to the sofa
and resumes her seat beside her.

MRS HUSHABYE. Ellie darling, have you noticed that some of those stories
that Othello told Desdemona couldn't have happened--?

ELLIE. Oh, no. Shakespeare thought they could have happened.

MRS HUSHABYE. Hm! Desdemona thought they could have happened. But they
didn't.

ELLIE. Why do you look so enigmatic about it? You are such a sphinx: I
never know what you mean.

MRS HUSHABYE. Desdemona would have found him out if she had lived, you
know. I wonder was that why he strangled her!

ELLIE. Othello was not telling lies.

MRS HUSHABYE. How do you know?

ELLIE. Shakespeare would have said if he was. Hesione, there are men who
have done wonderful things: men like Othello, only, of course, white,
and very handsome, and--

MRS HUSHABYE. Ah! Now we're coming to it. Tell me all about him. I knew
there must be somebody, or you'd never have been so miserable about
Mangan: you'd have thought it quite a lark to marry him.

ELLIE [blushing vividly]. Hesione, you are dreadful. But I don't want to
make a secret of it, though of course I don't tell everybody. Besides, I
don't know him.

MRS HUSHABYE. Don't know him! What does that mean?

ELLIE. Well, of course I know him to speak to.

MRS HUSHABYE. But you want to know him ever so much more intimately, eh?

ELLIE. No, no: I know him quite--almost intimately.

MRS HUSHABYE. You don't know him; and you know him almost intimately.
How lucid!

ELLIE. I mean that he does not call on us. I--I got into conversation
with him by chance at a concert.

MRS HUSHABYE. You seem to have rather a gay time at your concerts,
Ellie.

ELLIE. Not at all: we talk to everyone in the greenroom waiting for our
turns. I thought he was one of the artists: he looked so splendid. But
he was only one of the committee. I happened to tell him that I was
copying a picture at the National Gallery. I make a little money that
way. I can't paint much; but as it's always the same picture I can do it
pretty quickly and get two or three pounds for it. It happened that he
came to the National Gallery one day.

MRS HUSHABYE. One students' day. Paid sixpence to stumble about through
a crowd of easels, when he might have come in next day for nothing and
found the floor clear! Quite by accident?

ELLIE [triumphantly]. No. On purpose. He liked talking to me. He knows
lots of the most splendid people. F