Ginevra does not blanch. ‘Yes,’ she says recklessly, ‘but it is also only eight in seventeen years.’ ‘Isn’t it,’ says Amy, comforted. ‘And they have taught us so much, haven’t they? Until Monday, dear, when we went to our first real play we didn’t know what Life is.’ ‘We were two raw, unbleached school-girls, Amy--absolutely unbleached.’ It is such a phrase as this that gives Ginevra the moral ascendancy in their discussions. ‘Of course,’ Amy ventures, looking perhaps a little unbleached even now, ‘of course I had my diary, dear, and I do think that, even before Monday, there were things in it of a not wholly ordinary kind.’ ‘Nothing,’ persists Ginevra cruelly, ‘that necessitated your keeping it locked.’ ‘No, I suppose not,’ sadly enough. ‘You are quite right, Ginevra. But we have made up for lost time. Every night since Monday, including the matinee, has been a revelation.’ She closes her eyes so that she may see the revelations more clearly. So does Ginevra. ‘Amy, that heart-gripping scene when the love-maddened woman visited the _man_ in his _chambers_.’ ‘She wasn’t absolutely love-maddened, Ginevra; she really loved her husband best all the time.’ ‘Not till the last act, darling.’ ‘Please don’t say it, Ginevra. She was most foolish, especially in the crepe de chine, but _we_ know that she only went to the man’s chambers to get back her letters. How I trembled for her then.’ ‘I was strangely calm,’ says Ginevra the stony hearted. ‘Oh, Ginevra, I had such a presentiment that the husband would call at those chambers while she was there. And he did. Ginevra, you remember his knock upon the door. Surely you trembled then?’ Ginevra knits her lips triumphantly. ‘Not even then, Amy. Somehow I felt sure that in the nick of time her lady friend would step out from somewhere and say that the letters were _hers_.’ ‘Nobly compromising herself, Ginevra.’ ‘Amy, how I love that bit where she says so unexpectedly, with noble self-renunciation, “He is my affianced husband.”’ ‘Isn’t it glorious. Strange, Ginevra, that it happened in each play.’ ‘That was because we always went to the thinking theatres, Amy. Real plays are always about a lady and two men; and alas, only one of them is her husband. That is Life, you know. It is called the odd, odd triangle.’ ‘Yes, I know.’ Appealingly, ‘Ginevra, I hope it wasn’t wrong of me to go. A month ago I was only a school-girl.’ ‘We both were.’ ‘Yes, but you are now an art student, in lodgings, with a latchkey of your own; you have no one dependent on you, while I have a brother and sister to--to form.’ ‘You must leave it to the Navy, dear, to form Cosmo, if it can; and as the sister is only a baby, time enough to form her when she can exit from her pram.’ ‘I am in a mother’s place for the time being, Ginevra.’ ‘Even mothers go to thinking theatres.’