“Well, you know, for a long time I wondered whether I would come or not; I couldn’t make up my mind. You see, I’d seen nothing of you at all during these last days, nothing at all. Perhaps it was just as well. Anyhow, you had other things to do; and that is, I suppose, the difference between us. With women, sentiment, romance, call it what you like, is everything. It is life; but with you men it is only a little bit, one amongst a lot of other things. Oh! I know. I found that out long ago without waiting for anyone to tell me. But now, perhaps, you’ve brought it home to me in a way that I hadn’t realised before.” He was going to interrupt her, but she stopped him. “No, don’t think that I’m complaining about it. It’s perfectly natural. I know—other men are like that. It’s only that I had thought that you were a little different, not quite like the rest; that you had seen it as something precious, valuable. . . .” And so he had, of course he had. Why, it had made all the difference in his life. It was all very well his thinking, as he had that afternoon, that it was Tony or the place or Punch, one odd thing or another that had made him think like that, but, as a matter of fact, it was Mrs. Lester, and no one else. She had shown him all of it. “No, you mustn’t think that of me,” he said; “I have taken it very seriously indeed.” He wanted to say more, but his head was so heavy that he couldn’t think, and he stopped. Meanwhile she was wondering at her own position. She had come to him that evening in a state of pique. All day she had determined that she would not go. That was to be the end of an amusing little episode. And after all, he was only a great stupid hulk of a thing. He could crush her in his arms, but then so could any coalheaver. And she had got such a nice letter from Fred, the dear, that morning. He had missed her even during the day that he had been away. Oh yes! she wouldn’t see any more of Mr. Maradick! But she would like to have just a word alone with him. She expected to see him at teatime. But no; Sir Richard and Rupert had seen him at the station and he had said that he was following them back. But no; well, then, at dinner. Neither Tony nor he were at dinner. Oh well! he couldn’t care very much about her if he could stay away during the whole of their last day together! She was well out of it all. She read Fred’s letter a great many times and kissed it. Then directly after dinner—they were _so_ dull downstairs, everyone seemed to have the acutest depression and kept on wondering where Tony was—she went to her room and started writing a long, long letter to her “little pet of a Fredikins”; at least it was going to be a long, long letter, and then somehow it would not go on.