I feel nearer to nature then, but I don't say that
as an excuse. I like the smell of warm kitchens and the talk
of bus-drivers, and bread and herrings for my tea--all the low
satisfactions appeal to me. Beer, too, and hand-organs."

"I don't know when to believe you. He talks about her quite freely,
and--and so do I. She is really interesting in her way."

"And in perspective."

"Why should you be odiously smart. He and Stephen"--her glance was
tentative--"have made it up."

"Oh?"

"He admits now that Stephen was justified, from his point of view. But
of course that is easy enough when you have come off best."

"Of course."

"Hilda, what do you THINK?"

"Oh, I think it's deplorable--you have always known what I think. Have
you seen him lately--I mean your cousin?"

"He lunched with us yesterday. He was more enthusiastic than ever about
you."

"I wish you could tell me that he hadn't mentioned my name. I don't want
his enthusiasm. The pit gives one that."

"Hilda, tell me; what is your idea of--of what it ought to be? What is
the principal part of it? Not enthusiasm--adoration?"

"Goodness, no! Something quite different and quite simple--too simple to
explain. Besides, it is a thing that requires the completest ignorance
to discuss comfortably. Do you want me to vivisect my soul? You
yourself, can you talk about what most possesses you?"

"Oh," protested Alicia, "I wasn't thinking about myself," and at the
same moment the door opened and Hilda said, "Ah! Mr. Lindsay."

There was a hint of the unexpected in Duff's response to Miss Howe's
greeting, and a suggestion in the way he sat down that this made a
difference, and that he must find other things to say. He found them
with facility, while Hilda decided that she would finish her tea before
she went. Alicia, busy with the urn, seemed satisfied to abandon them to
each other, to take a decorative place in the conversation, interrupting
it with brief inquiries about cream and sugar. Alicia waited, it was her
way; she sank almost palpably into the tapestries until some reviving
circumstance should bring her out again, a process which was quite
compatible with her little laughs and comments. She waited, offering
repose, and unconscious even of that. You know Hilda Howe as a creature
of bold reflections. Looking at Alicia Livingstone behind the teapot,
the conviction visited her that a sex three-quarters of this fibre
explained the monastic clergy.

"It is