“You’re nice—you’re very nice!” said she, kissing her warm baby. “I’m fond of you. I like you.” And, indeed, she loved Little B so much—her neck as she bent forward, her exquisite toes as they shone transparent in the firelight—that all her feeling of bliss came back again, and again she didn’t know how to express it—what to do with it. “You’re wanted on the telephone,” said Nanny, coming back in triumph and seizing _her_ Little B. Down she flew. It was Harry. “Oh, is that you, Ber? Look here. I’ll be late. I’ll take a taxi and come along as quickly as I can, but get dinner put back ten minutes—will you? All right?” “Yes, perfectly. Oh, Harry!” “Yes?” What had she to say? She’d nothing to say. She only wanted to get in touch with him for a moment. She couldn’t absurdly cry: “Hasn’t it been a divine day!” “What is it?” rapped out the little voice. “Nothing. _Entendu_,” said Bertha, and hung up the receiver, thinking how more than idiotic civilization was. They had people coming to dinner. The Norman Knights—a very sound couple—he was about to start a theatre, and she was awfully keen on interior decoration, a young man, Eddie Warren, who had just published a little book of poems and whom everybody was asking to dine, and a “find” of Bertha’s called Pearl Fulton. What Miss Fulton did, Bertha didn’t know. They had met at the club and Bertha had fallen in love with her, as she always did fall in love with beautiful women who had something strange about them. The provoking thing was that, though they had been about together and met a number of times and really talked, Bertha couldn’t yet make her out. Up to a certain point Miss Fulton was rarely, wonderfully frank, but the certain point was there, and beyond that she would not go. Was there anything beyond it? Harry said “No.” Voted her dullish, and “cold like all blond women, with a touch, perhaps, of anæmia of the brain.” But Bertha wouldn’t agree with him; not yet, at any rate. “No, the way she has of sitting with her head a little on one side, and smiling, has something behind it, Harry, and I must find out what that something is.” “Most likely it’s a good stomach,” answered Harry. He made a point of catching Bertha’s heels with replies of that kind . . . “liver frozen, my dear girl,” or “pure flatulence,” or “kidney disease,” . . . and so on. For some strange reason Bertha liked this, and almost admired it in him very much. She went into the drawing-room and lighted the fire; then, picking up the cushions, one by one, that Mary had disposed so carefully, she threw them back on to the chairs and the couches. That made all the difference; the room came alive at once. As she was about to throw the last one she surprised herself by suddenly hugging it to her, passionately, passionately. But it did not put out the fire in her bosom. Oh, on the contrary!