Her mother smiled. "You were pretty." And took back her smile. "You'd be pretty always if you were happy, and you'd be happy if you were good. There's no happiness for any of us without Christ." She ignored the dexterous application. "Do you mean I'm not, then, really, so very ugly?" "Nobody said you were ugly." "Maurice Jourdain did." "You don't mean to say you're still thinking of that man?" "Not thinking exactly. Only wondering. Wondering what it was he hated so." "You wouldn't wonder if you knew the sort of man he is. A man who could threaten you with his infidelity." "He never threatened me." "I suppose it was me he threatened, then." "What did he say?" "He said that if his wife didn't take care to please him there were other women who would." "He ought to have said that to me. It was horrible of him to say it to you." She didn't know why she felt that it was horrible. "I can tell you _one_ thing," said her mother, as if she had not told her anything. "It was those books you read. That everlasting philosophy. He said it was answerable for the whole thing." "Then it was the--_the whole thing_ he hated." "I suppose so," her mother said, dismissing a matter of small interest. "You'd better change that skirt if you're going with me to Mrs. Waugh's." "Do you mind if I go for a walk instead?" "Not if it makes you any more contented." "It might. Are you sure you don't mind?" "Oh, go along with you!" Her mother was pleased. She was always pleased when she scored a point against philosophy. III. Mr. and Mrs. Belk were coming along High Row. She avoided them by turning down the narrow passage into Mr. Horn's yard and the Back Lane. From the Back Lane you could get up through the fields to the school-house lane without seeing people. She hated seeing them. They all thought the same thing: that you wanted Maurice Jourdain and that you were unhappy because you hadn't got him. They thought it was awful of you. Mamma thought it was awful, like--like Aunt Charlotte wanting to marry the piano-tuner, or poor Jenny wanting to marry Mr. Spall. Maurice Jourdain knew better than that. He knew you didn't want to marry him any more than he wanted to marry you. He nagged at you about your hair, about philosophy--she could hear his voice nag-nagging now as she went up the lane--he could nag worse than a woman, but he knew. _She_ knew. As far as she could see through the working of his dark mind, first he had cared for her, cared violently. Then he had not cared. That would be because he cared for some other woman. There were two of them. The girl and the married woman. She felt no jealousy and no interest in them beyond wondering which of them it would be and what they would be like. There had been two Mary Oliviers; long-haired-- short-haired, and she had been jealous of the long-haired one. Jealous of herself.