‘Please don’t be sorry for me.’ She noted her own voice, icy and polite. Geraldine had inserted a thin, yellow cigarette in the holder and was searching for a match. ‘Here,’ said Judith. She got up, took the matchbox from the mantelpiece and struck a light. Geraldine stooped her head down over the little flare. White lids, black curling lashes, broad cheek-bones, Egyptian lips--the heaviness, the thick waxen texture of the whole face: Judith saw them all with an aching and terrible intensity, her eyes clinging to the head bowed above her hand. She should have smelt like a gardenia. ‘Thank you,’ said Geraldine. She lifted her head, narrowed her eyes and puffed out smoke, moving and stretching her mouth faintly round the amber. She smoked like a man. Judith sat down again. Geraldine seemed now very much at her ease. She leaned against the mantelpiece, dominating the room: and she seemed of gigantic height and significance. ‘Are you a friend of Jennifer’s?’ she said. ‘Jennifer--is a person I know well.’ She looked at Judith as if in surprise at her tone and manner. ‘I had no idea of that. She never mentioned you.’ For a moment that dealt a blinding blow, with its instantaneous implications of dishonesty and indifference. But she repeated: ‘I’ve known her well for two years. You can ask her. She _might_ admit it.’ And as she spoke the last words she thought with sudden excitement: ‘Just as I never mentioned Roddy....’ ‘Oh, I can’t get anything out of her,’ said Geraldine and added truculently: ‘You might as well tell me what it’s all about.’ ‘I have nothing whatever to tell you. I don’t know why you’ve come. I’d like _you_ to tell me what it’s all about--or else go away, please.’ She was conscious all at once of a terrible inward trembling, and got up again. The other watched her in silence, and she added: ‘I haven’t been near her--since that night in her room. I’ve kept away--you know that night....’ ‘What night?’ Judith broke into a sort of laugh; and then checked herself with a vast effort: for the suppressed hysteria of weeks was climbing upwards within her and if it broke loose, it might never, never cease. ‘Well--one night,’ she said, ‘I thought perhaps you remembered.’ There was not a flicker on Geraldine’s face. She must be very stupid or very cruel. ‘What beats me,’ said Geraldine, ‘is why this dead set against me?--against her and me. What do you want to interfere with us for? It’s not your business, any of you. I thought I’d come and tell you so.’ There was a curious coarseness about her: almost a vulgarity. It was difficult to combat. Judith lifted her eyes and looked at her in silence. ‘So you’ve all sent Jennifer to Coventry.’ She laughed. ‘It’s marvellous. A female institution is really marvellous. At least it would be if it weren’t so nauseating.’ Still Judith was silent, and she added contemptuously: