Linda without a conscious reason suddenly stopped the investigation of her feeling for Pleydon. Even in the privacy of her thoughts an added obscurity kept her from the customary clear reasoning. After dinner, out in the close gloom of the garden, she watched the flicker of the cigarettes. There was thunder, so distant and vague that for a long while Linda thought she was deceived. She had a keen rushing sensation of the strangeness of her situation here--Linda Hallet. The night was like a dream from which she would stir, sigh, to find herself back again in the past waiting for the return of her mother from one of her late parties. But it was Arnaud who moved and, accompanying Elouise Lowrie, went into the house for his interminable reading. Pleydon's voice began in a low remembering tone: “What a fantastic place the Feldt apartment was, with that smothered room where you said you would marry me. You must have got hold of Hallet in the devil of a hurry. I've often tried to understand what happened; why, all the time, you were upset--why, why, why?” “In a way it was because a ridiculous hairdresser burned out some of my mother's front wave,” she explained. “Of course,” he replied derisively, “nothing could be plainer.” She agreed calmly. “It was very plain. If you want me to try to tell you don't interrupt. It isn't a happy memory, and I am only doing it because I was so rotten to you. “Yes, I can see now that it was the hairdresser and a hundred other things exactly the same. My mother, all the women we knew, did nothing but lace and paint and frizzle for men. I used to think it was a game they played and wonder where the fun was. There were even hints about that and later they particularized and it made me as sick as possible. The men, too, were odious; mostly fat and bald; and after a while, when they pinched or kissed me, I wanted to die. “That was all I knew about love, I had never heard of any other--men away from their families for what they called a good time and women plotting and planning to give it to them or not give it to them. Then mother, after her looks were spoiled, married Mr. Moses Feldt, and I met Judith, who only existed for men and men's rooms and told me worse things, I'm sure, than mother ever dreamed; and, on top of that, I met you and you kissed me. “But it was different from any other; it didn't shock me, and it brought back a thrill I have always had. I wanted, then, to love you, and have you ask me to marry you, more than anything else in the world. I was sure, if you would only be patient, that I could change what had hurt me into a beautiful feeling. I couldn't tell you because I didn't understand myself.” She stopped, and Pleydon repeated, bitterly and slow: “Fat old bald men; and I was one with them destroying your exquisite hope.” She heard the creak of the basket chair as he leaned forward, his face masked in darkness. “Perhaps you think I haven't paid.