-you'd see their souls, like
long, fat white slugs stretched out too, glued to their bodies.... You
know what they think? They think we met each other on purpose. They think
we're engaged."

"I don't care," she said. "It doesn't matter what they think."

They laughed at the silliness of the family from Birmingham. He had been
there five days.

* * * * *

"I--, sa-ay--"

Gwinnie's voice drawled in slow meditative surprise.

The brooding curiosity had gone out of her face. Gwinnie's face, soft and
schoolgirlish between the fawn gold bands and plaited ear bosses of her
hair, the pink, pushed out mouth, the little routing nose, the thick grey
eyes, suddenly turned on you, staring.

Gwinnie had climbed up on to the bed to hear about it. She sat hunched up
with her arms round her knees rocking herself on the end of her spine;
and though she stared she still rocked. She was happy and excited because
of her holiday.

"It can't make any difference, Gwin. I'm the same Charlotte. Don't tell
me you didn't know I was like that."

"Of course I knew it. I know a jolly lot more than you think, kid."

"I'm not a kid--if you _are_ two years older."

"Why--you're not twenty-four yet.... It's the silliness of it beats me.
Going off like that, with the first silly cuckoo that turns up."

"He wasn't the first that turned up, I mean. He was the third that
counted. There was poor Binky, the man I was engaged to. And Dicky
Raikes; he wanted me to go to Mexico with him. Just for a lark, and I
wouldn't. And George Corfield. _He_ wanted me to marry him. And I
wouldn't."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because Dicky's always funny when you want to be serious and George is
always serious when you want to be funny. Besides, he's so good. His
goodness would have been too much for me altogether. Fancy _beginning_
with George."

"This seems to have been a pretty rotten beginning, anyway."

"The beginning was all right. It's the end that's rotten. The really
awful thing was Effie."

"Look here--" Gwinnie left off rocking and swung herself to the edge of
the bed. Her face looked suddenly mature and full of wisdom. "I don't
believe in that Effie business. You want to think you stopped it because
of Effie; but you didn't. You've got to see it straight.... It was his
lying and funking that finished you. He fixed on the two things you
can't stand."

The two things. The two things.

"I know what you want. You want