Fleda hesitated. "You mean their marriage?" "Whatever we hear, I must go." As the cab went on she added: "But I needn't drag you to the station."!

"Deuce take you, no! To what we don't, you know, by your wish, ever talk about." She was in a fever of ingenuity and painfully conscious, on behalf of her success, that her fever was visible. She could herself see the reflection of it glitter in Mrs. Gereth's sombre eyes.

"I'm trying not to think of myself." "That and several other things." "When I got into this I didn't know you, and now that I know you how can I tell you the difference? And she's so different, so ugly and vulgar, in the light of this squabble. No, like you I've never known one. It's another thing, it's a new thing altogether. Listen to me a little: can't something be done?" It was what had been in the air in those moments at Kensington, and it only wanted words to be a committed act. The more reason, to the girl's excited mind, why it shouldn't have words; her one thought was not to hear, to keep the act uncommitted. She would do this if she had to be horrid.