During dinner the two women talked as any two women of their types might have talked, quite noncommittally, although, in a surface way, quite intimately. Miss Briggs was a creature full of tact, and was the last person in the world to try to force a confidence from anyone. She was also not given at any time to pouring out confidences of her own. After dinner they sat in a little room which Miss Briggs had had conveyed from Persia to Paris. Everything in it was Persian. When the door by which it was entered had been shut there was absolutely nothing to suggest Europe to those within. A faint Eastern perfume pervaded this strange little room, which suggested a deep retirement, an almost cloistered seclusion. A grille in one of the walls drew the imagination towards the harem. It seemed that there must be hidden women over there beyond it. Instinctively one listened for the tinkle of childish laughter, for the distant plash of a fountain, for the shuffle of slippers on marble. Lady Sellingworth admired this room, and envied her friend for possessing it. But that night it brought to her a thought which she could not help expressing. “Aren’t you terribly lonely in this house, Caroline?” she said. “It is so large and so wonderful that I should think it must make solitude almost a bodily shape to you. And this room seems to be in the very heart of the house. Do you ever sit here without a friend or guest?” “Now and then, but not often at night,” said Miss Briggs, with serene self-possession. “You are an extraordinary woman!” said Lady Sellingworth. “Extraordinary! Why?” “Because you always seem so satisfied to live quite alone. I hate solitude. I’m afraid of it.” Suddenly she felt that she must be partially frank with her hostess. “Is self-respect a real companion for a woman?” she said. “Can one sit with it and be contented? Does it repay a woman for all the sacrifices she has offered up to it? Is it worth the sacrifices? That’s what I want to know.” “I dare say that depends on the woman’s mental make up,” replied Miss Briggs. “One woman, perhaps, might find that it was, another that it was not.” “Yes, we are all so different, so dreadfully different, one from another.” “It would be very much duller if we weren’t.” “Even as it is life can be very dull.” “I should certainly not call your life dull,” said Miss Briggs. “Anyhow, it’s dreadful!” said Lady Sellingworth, with sudden abandonment. “Why is it dreadful?” “Caroline, I was fifty a few days ago.” As Lady Sellingworth said this she observed her friend closely to see if she looked surprised. Miss Briggs did not look surprised. And she only said: “Were you? Well, I shall be fifty-eight in a couple of months.” “You don’t look it.” “Perhaps that’s because I haven’t looked young for the last thirty years.” “I hate being fifty. The difficulty with me is that my--my nature and my temperament don’t match with my age. And that worries me. What is one to do?”