Once you have achieved complete understanding with anybody it isn't necessary, I know, to talk much. I have been told this by the wise. They have said mere knowledge that the understanding is there is enough. They have said that perfect understanding needs no expression, that the perfect intercourse is without words. That may be; but I want to talk. Not excessively, but sometimes. Speech does add grace and satisfaction to friendship. It may not be necessary, but it is very agreeable. As far as I can see I am never, except by the rarest chance, going to get an opportunity of talking to Dolly alone. And there are so many things I want to ask her. Were her experiences all pleasant? Or is it her gay, indomitable spirit that has left her, after them, so entirely unmarked? Anyhow the last five years can't possibly have been pleasant, and yet they've not left the shadow of a stain on her serenity. I feel that she would think very sanely about anything her bright mind touched. There is something disinfecting about Dolly. I believe she would disinfect me of the last dregs of morbidness I still may have lurking inside me. She and Mrs. Barnes are utterly poor. When the war began Dolly was in Germany, she told me that morning in the kitchen-garden, and had been a widow nearly a year. Not Siegfried's widow: Juchs's. I find her widowhoods confusing. 'Didn't you ever have a child, Dolly?' I asked. 'No,' she said. 'Then how is it you twitched the handkerchief off your sister's sleeping face that first day and said Peep bo to her so professionally?' 'I used to do that to Siegfried. We were both quite young to begin with, and played silly games.' 'I see,' I said. 'Go on.' Juchs had left her some money; just enough to live on. Siegfried hadn't ever had any, except what he earned as a clerk in a bank, but Juchs had had some. She hadn't married Juchs for any reason, I gathered, except to please him. It did please him very much, she said, and I can quite imagine it. Siegfried too had been pleased in his day. 'I seem to have a gift for pleasing Germans,' she remarked, smiling. 'They were both very kind to me. I ended by being very fond of them both. I believe I'd be fond of anyone who was kind. There's a good deal of the dog about me.'