For one moment Amory fairly lost her composure, but only for one moment. The next moment she had seen what was the matter. By "taking an interest in things" Dorothy meant forsaking her principles; by "putting on clothes like other people's," she meant abandoning her velvets and corduroys that took the light in such lovely broken bits of accidental colour, and dressing like one of her own impossible fashion-plates; and by being "a bit more like a human being," she meant sitting with a young man on a box and kissing him with a mouth full of sandwich. It was almost too funny to laugh at. If Dorothy would only ask her outright what she evidently had in her mind to ask her--why she didn't marry Cosimo--it would be perfect. Poor old Dot! She had been fairly caught only a few minutes before, and naturally would still feel rather sore. Amory waited for her to go on. She did go on. "I've wanted to say this for a long time," she said. "Look here, Amory, why don't you marry Cosimo and have done with it? You're lovely--he's quite good-looking--you seem to understand one another all right--I'm sure you ought to by this time--and it would be ever so much more sensible! It seems to me you could drag on like this for ever!" Amory's golden eyes seemed to dance with mirth. Of course that accidental discovery had forced Dorothy's hand beautifully. Dorothy was pleading with her as earnestly as if she had just been seen, not "canoodling" under a counter (that Amory believed was the word used in such cases), but lifted up on a plinth, in a heroic pose, with an archangel by her side, grouped with their faces towards the east or in whatever quarter the sun of Feminism might be expected to rise.... Amory had not even to say anything. All she needed to do was to stand smiling at dear old Dot and to watch her grow redder and redder. Obviously there was no need to accuse Dorothy when Dorothy was accusing herself. In another moment, too, Dorothy was defending herself. Her eyes, in the surrounding flush of colour, seemed bluer than ever. And in jumping straight at Amory's thought she skipped a stage. "I don't care anyway," she blurted out. "Some things _are_ understandable, but you and Cosimo--well, who's to make head or tail of _you_? You're always together, early and late, sometimes in your place and sometimes in his--of course _I_ understand, dear, but really I don't see how you could blame people who didn't if--if----" Already Amory had drawn herself up to her full five foot against the redwood counter and had tossed back the bright nasturtium of her head. "If what?" she asked, the brook-brown eyes looking full into Dorothy's blue ones. "Well, if they draw their own conclusions, if you must know," Dorothy blurted out. As a wet cloth wipes chalk from a blackboard, so the smile had gone from Amory's face. Most decidedly she wasn't going to stand this--at any rate not from Dorothy. "Oh!" she said. "What people? And what conclusions?"