Noise went up the stairs with us, entering into the dining-room and colliding with noise already established there. I had been out of it for so long that it occurred to me to wonder why we should assert that we gathered together because of our interest in each other’s talk, as seldom did we listen to what was being said. It came to our ears in a concatenation robbed of all meaning; only when a chance remark struck against a particular interest did one of us hear with the intelligence. Molly’s latest pet sat beside her, gulping down whatever she chose to say; he, of us all, was fresh enough to mourn over a lost word. “I work,” expounded Molly, “under the driving power of the most fundamental of all instincts. I mean--that instinct which draws men and women together. I mean,” she went into it more fully but still languidly, “I can’t--I simply can’t--work except under the influence of blasted love. When the affair is going on I give myself up to the sweep of the wings of the angels. Then, during the inevitable resulting blight, I work.” She drooped over the very young man. “It had occurred to me, on the spur of the moment, that the souse at the bar downstairs might treat me to a good blight.” “Tell us more,” Winnie urged. “How did you lose him?” Molly seemed already to have the blight upon her. “As usual with his sex, he wanted to see Eva Litchfield. Said he had gloated over her picture. That latest photograph doesn’t look like her in the least.” I pinned her down. “She’s changed, then?” Molly shrugged. “Wouldn’t she be showing wear?” she drawled. When in this mood she said something spiteful, one felt that the pauses between her words were insufferable. Her manner was a blend of the prostitute and the acidulated spinster. I thought of Eva, whose manner charmed me; hers was a tenuous aloofness that under a strain might give way but never descend. Hers was the cool pride of a head held high and eyes that looked straight. Her brows levelled, she threw at the world, by the power of this direct regard, that a vast disgust of all physical contact held her imagination. The very young man begged Molly: “Go on talking? Don’t stop?” PART TWO [Illustration] I I did not doubt that my invitation to tea at the Misses Ingoldsby’s was the direct outcome of Gertrude Cuyler’s dissatisfaction over the abrupt termination of our chat. I knew her aunts but slightly. They were middle-aged ladies of bridge-playing proclivities, and except for the interpenetration of Eva Litchfield we should have continued upon a basis of mutual indifferent kindliness.