Mabel little by little relinquishing the effort to draw Judith into her life and desperately endeavoring to fit herself into Judith’s: chattering to other girls, trying to be amused by their jokes, to share their enthusiasms and illusions; pretending to have a gay home-life, full of interesting friends and fun; pretending to laugh at the thought of work and to treat lightly that nightmare of the Tripos which crushed her to the earth. Once or twice Judith tried to draw her into the evening circle, explaining her loneliness, appealing beforehand for her pathos.... But it was no good. She was of another order of beings,--dreary and unadaptable. And Jennifer, with a wicked light in her eye, spoke loudly and with malicious irreverence of dons, the clergy and the Bible; and mentioned the body with light-hearted frankness; and Judith felt ashamed of herself for thinking Jennifer funny. Mabel striving doggedly to believe that Jennifer was in the nature of an illness from which Judith would recover by careful treatment, then striving to ignore the importance of the relationship--staking out an exclusive claim in Judith by references suggestive of a protective intimacy. ‘Now, now! Pale cheeks! What will your mother say, I’d like to know, if I let you go home looking like this? I shall have to come and put you to bed myself.’ And there followed the flush and the hungry gleam while awkwardly she touched Judith’s cheek. Mabel at long last voluntarily dropping out of all the places into which she had tried to force herself, going back without a word to her solitary room and her doughnuts. There were no more little notes rearing unwelcome heads in the letter-box. She asked nothing. From the window late at night Judith could see her lamp staring with a tense wan hopeless eye across the court. In the midst of talk and laughter with Jennifer, she saw it suddenly and knew that Mabel was sitting alone, hunched over note-books and dictionaries, breathing stertorously through her nose hour after hour, dimly hoping that her uncurtained window might attract Judith’s attention, persuade her to look in and say good-night. ‘Oh, Jennifer, I won’t be five minutes. I must just go and see Mabel. It’s awful. You don’t know. She expects me; and she’ll sit up all night working if I don’t go.’ ‘Tell her about the young lady of Bute with my love and a kiss,’ said Jennifer in the loud voice edged with brutality which she reserved for Mabel. ‘And say the mistress is very disappointed in her because she’s discovered she doesn’t wear corsets. She’s going to speak about it publicly to-morrow night because it’s very immoral. And ask her what _will_ her mother say if you let her go home with all those spots on her face.’ Judith escaped, laughing, ran down the dark stairs to Mabel’s room and tapped. ‘Come in.’