Bill asked her about her singing, and she said that she’d learned at school, and taken a few lessons just before she married. She used to sing a good deal, in Cairo, because the men she knew liked it. Did he understand, she asked him, that she was the sort of person who sang only for that sort of reason? Once, at a party in a man’s rooms, they’d put her right up on the top of the piano, and she’d sung there, and they’d said it was worth a double brandy-and-soda. Men were always wanting to stand her drinks, and she took them, partly out of devilment, and partly because her husband hated it. She’d got a strong enough head for anything. I can quite imagine her facing Bill, as she told him that, her mouth hard and rather mocking, and perhaps in her eyes the dawn of a hope that she strove to believe was an incredulous one. And Bill said that had nothing at all to do with it. He didn’t specify what _it_ was, that it had nothing to do with--but that was the last time Diamond Harter ever thought it necessary to point out to him the things about herself, by which the rest of the world judged her. _Chapter Seven_ Most of us, no doubt--except, I must once more add, the Kendals--hover between two planes of consciousness: the inner life and the outer existence. The predominant values of either remain fairly well defined, and vary very little. But for Captain Patch, that summer, the inner life and the outer one must have mingled strangely. In the mornings, he listened to old Carey’s chatter of Crippen, and Mrs. Maybrick, and all the other figures in his rather _macabre_ gallery of celebrities, and he gardened with Mrs. Fazackerly, and they worked at the “Bulbul Ameer” show together. Very often, in the afternoons, there were rehearsals, sometimes there were tennis parties. Very often, though not always, he and Mrs. Harter met at the latter. She was invited to quite a lot of places, partly thanks to Nancy Fazackerly’s efforts, and partly because she played a hard game of tennis quite extraordinarily well. Bill Patch always saw her home afterwards, quite openly. And every evening they were out together, often going very far afield, for she was a good walker. Once Martyn Ambrey met them, and it was after that, when someone spoke of “that Mrs. Harter,” that he said to Mary: “Do you remember our saying she had such a defiant face, and you said she looked unhappy?” “Yes. The night she sang ‘The Bluebells of Scotland’ at the concert.” “And cousin Claire said she was hard.” “Did she?” “Of course, cousin Claire is almost always wrong.” “You only mean that you and she generally hold different opinions.” Martyn laughed, but after a minute he said reflectively: “That woman hard? I wonder what we were all thinking about.”