'I think I couldn't bear anyone else to take my place exactly,' admitted Edith. 'C'est ca! you don't want him to be in love with another married woman with a husband like Bruce? Well, my dear, he won't. There is no other husband like Bruce. Landi promised to consider the question, and she arranged to go and see him at his studio before seeing Aylmer again. * * * * * As they went out of the house Miss Coniston ran after Madame Frabelle and said eagerly: 'Oh, do tell me again; you say _soupe a la vinaigre_ is marvellously nourishing and economical. I can have it made for my brother at our flat?' 'Of course you can! It costs next to nothing.' Arthur Coniston came up. 'And tastes like nothing on earth, I suppose?' he grumbled in his sister's ear. 'You can't give me much less to eat than you do already.' 'Oh, Arthur!' his sister said. 'Aren't you happy at home? I think you're a pessimist.' 'A pessimist!' cried Mitchell, who was following them into the hall. 'Oh, I hate pessimists! What's the latest definition of them? Ah, I know; an optimist is a person who doesn't care what happens as long as it doesn't happen to him.' 'Yes,' said Edith quickly, 'and a pessimist is the person who lives with the optimist.' 'Dear, dear. I always thought the old joke was that an optimist looks after the eyes, and a pessimist after the feet!' cried Madame Frabelle as she fastened her cloak. 'Why, then, he ought to go to a cheer-upadist!' said Mr Mitchell. And they left him in roars of laughter. CHAPTER XVIII Dulcie Clay, in her neat uniform of grey and white, with the scarlet cross on the front of her apron, was sitting in the room she occupied for the moment in Aylmer's house in Jermyn Street. It was known as 'the second best bedroom'. As she was anxious not to behave as if she were a guest, she used it as a kind of boudoir when she was not in attendance. It was charmingly furnished in the prim Chippendale style, a style dainty, but not luxurious, that seemed peculiarly suited to Dulcie. She was in the window-seat--not with her feet up, no cushions behind her. Unlike Edith, she was not the kind of woman who rested habitually; she sat quite upright in the corner. A beautiful little mahogany table was at her right, with a small electric lamp on it, and two books. One of the books was her own choice, the other had been lent to her by Aylmer. It was a volume of Bernard Shaw. She could make neither head nor tail of it, and the prefaces, which she read with the greatest avidity, perplexed her even more than the books themselves. Every now and then a flash of lightning, in the form of some phrase she knew, illumined for a second the darkness of the author's words. But soon she closed the thick volume with the small print and returned to _The Daisy Chain_.