The rest of the company seemed suddenly to have disappeared; Maradick and Tony had gone out together, Lady Gale and Alice, followed by Sir Richard and Lester, had vanished through another door; only Mrs. Lawrence remained, working rather dismally at a small square piece of silk that was on some distant occasion to be christened a table-centre. Mrs. Maradick sometimes walked on her heels to increase her height; she did so now, but her knees were trembling and she had a curious feeling that the smile on her face was fixed there and that it would never come off, she would smile like that always. As she came towards the table where Mrs. Lester was another strange sensation came to her. It was that she would like to strangle Mrs. Lester. As she smiled at her across the table her hands were, in imagination, stretching with long twisting fingers and encircling Mrs. Lester’s neck. She saw the exact spot; she could see the little blue marks that her fingers would leave. She could see Mrs. Lester’s head twisted to one side and hanging in a stupid, silly way over her shoulder. She would draw her fingers very slowly away, because they would be reluctant to let go. Of course it was a very stupid, primitive feeling, because ladies that lived in Epsom didn’t strangle other ladies, and there were the girls to be thought of, and it wouldn’t really do at all. And so Mrs. Maradick sat down. “It is quite cool,” she said as she brought out her work, “and after such a hot day, too.” Mrs. Lester enjoyed the situation very much. She knew quite well that Maradick had been watching her anxiously all the afternoon. She knew that he was waiting to see what she was going to do about yesterday. She had not been quite sure herself at first. In fact, directly after he had left her she had been furiously angry; and then she had been frightened and had gone to find Fred, and then had cried in her bedroom for half an hour. And then she had dried her eyes and had put on her prettiest dress and had come down to dinner intending to be very stiff and stately towards him. But he had not been there; no one had known where he was. Mrs. Maradick had more or less conveyed that Mrs. Lester could say if she wanted to, but of course she wouldn’t. However, she really didn’t know. The evening was stupid, tiresome, and very long. As the hours passed memories grew stronger. No one had ever held her like that before. She had never known such strength. She was crushed, gasping. There was a man! And after all, it didn’t matter; there was nothing _wrong_ in _that_. Of course he oughtn’t to have done it. It was very presumptuous and violent; but then that was just like the man. It was the kind of thing that he did, the kind of thing, after all, that he was meant to do! In the Middle Ages, of course, would have been his time. She pictured him with some beautiful maiden swung across the crupper, and the husband, fist in air but impotent—that was the kind of man.