Her little hands fell slowly open at her sides; then she rested one of them upon the white cloth that was just being laid for lunch. The horn of an automobile sounded rather gently outside, and the wheels of a butcher’s cart rattled past. “Oh, Robert,” she said suddenly, “it wasn’t about me you quarrelled? Don’t you understand she’s here in the house now? That was Sir William Wells who just left.” “She hasn’t been attacking you?” Grimshaw persisted. “Oh, she wouldn’t, you know,” Pauline answered. “She isn’t that sort. It’s you she would attack if she attacked anybody.” “Oh, well, yes,” Robert Grimshaw answered. “It was about you we quarrelled--about you and Dudley, about the household: it occupies too much of my attention. She wants me altogether.” “Then what’s she here for?” Pauline said. “I don’t know,” Grimshaw said. “Perhaps because she’s sorry for you.” “Sorry for me!” Pauline said, “because I care.... But then she ... Oh, where do we stand?” “What has she done?” Robert Grimshaw said. “What does she say?” “About you?” Pauline said. “No, no--about the case?” “Oh,” Pauline said, “she says that if we can only find out who it was rang up that number it would be quite likely that we could cure him.” Grimshaw suddenly sat down. “That means ...” he said, and then he stopped. Pauline said: “What? I couldn’t bear to cause her any unhappiness.” “Oh,” Robert Grimshaw answered, “is that the way to talk in our day and--and--and our class? We don’t take things like that.” “Oh, my dear,” she said painfully, “how are we taking this?” Then she added: “And in any case Katya isn’t of our day or our class.” She came near, and stood over him, looking down. “Robert,” she said gravely, “who is of our day and our class? Are you? Or am I? Why are your hands shaking like that, or why did I just now call you ‘my dear’? We’ve got to face the fact that I called you ‘my dear.’ Then, don’t you see, you can’t be of our day and our class. And as for me, wasn’t it really because Dudley wasn’t faithful to me that I’ve let myself slide near you? I haven’t made a scandal or any outcry about Dudley Leicester. That’s our day and that’s our class. But look at all the difference it’s made in our personal relations! Look at the misery of it all! That’s it. We can make a day and a class and rules for them, but we can’t keep any of the rules except just the gross ones like not making scandals.” “Then, what Katya’s here for,” Robert Grimshaw said, “is to cure Dudley. She’s a most wonderful sense, and she knows that the only way to have me altogether is to cure him.” “Oh, don’t put it as low down as that,” Pauline said. “Just a little time ago you said that it was because she was sorry for me.” “Yes, yes,” Grimshaw answered eagerly; “that’s it; that’s the motive. But it doesn’t hinder the result from being that, when Dudley’s cured, we all fly as far apart as the poles.”