Neither Mary nor I was tactless enough to remind her of all this. In fact, we said very little. The Claire type of mind cannot be approached by arguments, being almost as wholly devoid of sustained reasoning powers as is a young child. It was inevitable that Claire should be jealous of the woman with whom her brother fell in love, and the obviousness of poor Mrs. Fazackerly’s shortcomings made things simpler, in a way. It provided Claire with a more or less legitimate outlet for her irrational sense of grievance. “I should never utter one word--I should thank God upon my knees--if Christopher had found somebody with whom he could go through life in utter and absolute sympathy--the perfect companion--” said Claire emotionally, and quite genuinely unaware that her aspirations on Christopher’s behalf were far beyond any that he would ever entertain for himself. I remember, word for word, a curious little interlude that came in, there, the outcome of that outburst of poor Claire’s. “The perfect companion of whom you speak has no existence, at least on this plane,” I said, foolishly enough. Mary Ambrey looked at me and smiled. “Miles!” She said my name almost exactly in the half-affectionate, half-amused way in which a mother admonishes a child when the child is trying to “show off” before strangers. She wasn’t in the least taken in by my cheap cynicism, and she wouldn’t allow me to be taken in by it, either. Dear, beautiful Mary Ambrey! I never, like people in a novel, wonder whether she has ever guessed. With her fine, clear intelligence, of course she has guessed--long, long ago. We had a bad quarter of an hour with Claire. Mary, of course, was far more successful with her than I was, because she did not exhaust herself and infuriate Claire by reasoning with her. She just let her talk--and talk--and talk. By the time that Sallie came in Claire had got to the stage of knowing that she was repeating herself and of being secretly glad of an interruption. “We were going to have the dress rehearsal next week,” Sallie said. “Which day, Cousin Miles?” So we were once more absorbed into the atmosphere of the theatricals. “The Bulbul Ameer,” one could not help feeling, was taking shape as a play in spite of most of the people who were acting in it. Sallie and Martyn both had talent and a certain amount of amateur experience, but Alfred Kendal’s sole qualification appeared to be an unlimited confidence in something which he spoke of, in a very professional way, as “gag.” This had a disastrous effect upon Bill Patch, and both of them took to appealing to Nancy Fazackerly, as part author of the piece. Her ingenuity was hard put to it, once or twice, and I was touched when I noticed that she seemed to be making some endeavors in the direction of truthfulness. Claire noticed it, too, I feel certain, and the atmosphere that she managed to diffuse at rehearsal became less violently hostile than it had been at first.