'Shall we discuss Mr. Feilding any longer?' Armorel asked, with a little impatience. 'It really seems as if we had nothing to talk about but the perfections of this incomparable person.' It was in the evening. Armorel had discovered, already, that the evenings spent at home in the society of her companion were both long and dull; that they had nothing to talk about; that Zoe regarded every single subject from a point of view which was not her own; and that both in conversation and in personal intercourse she was having a great deal more than she desired of Mr. Alec Feilding. Therefore, she was naturally a little impatient. One cannot every evening go and sit alone in the study: one cannot play the violin all the evening: and one cannot reduce a companion to absolute silence. Zoe, who had been talking into the fire from her cushions, turned her fluffy head, opened her blue eyes wide, and looked, not reproachfully but sorrowfully and with wonder, at a girl who could hear too much about Alec Feilding. 'Let me talk--just a little--sometimes--of my best friend, Armorel, dear. If you only knew what Alec has been to me and to my lost lover--my Jerome!' 'Forgive me, Zoe. Go on talking about him.' 'How quiet and cosy,' she murmured, in reply, 'this room is in the evening! It makes one feel virtuous only to think of the cold wind and the cold people outside. This heaven is surely a reward for the righteous. It is enough only to lie in the warmth without talking. But the time and the place invite confidences. Armorel, I am going to repose a great confidence in you--a secret plan of my own. And you are so very, very sympathetic when you please, dear child--especially when Effie is here--I wonder if she is worth it?--that you might spare me a little of your sympathy.' 'My dear Zoe'--Armorel felt a touch of remorse--she had been unsympathetic--'you shall have all there is to spare. But what kind of sympathy do you want? You were talking of Mr. Feilding--not of yourself.' 'Yes--and that is of myself in a way. I know you will not misunderstand me, dear. You will not imagine that I am--well, in love with Alec, when I confess to you that I think a very great deal about him.' 'I never thought so, at all,' said Armorel. Zoe's eyes opened for a moment and gleamed. It was a doubtful saying. Why should not she be in love with Alec, or Alec with her? But Armorel knew nothing about love. 'When a woman has loved once, dear,' she murmured, 'her heart is gone. My love-passages,' she put her handkerchief to her eyes--to some women the drawing-room is the stage--'my love-story, dear, is finished and done. My heart is in the grave with Jerome. But this you cannot understand. I think so much of Alec--first, because he has been all goodness to me; and, next, because he is so wonderfully clever.' 'Talk about him, Zoe, as long as you please.'