He was doing all he could to calm and steady me, he said. And certainly he tried to make me feel that what to me was like a maniac's nightmare, an abysmal horror beggaring language and crucifying thought--it was all a commonplace to men and women of the world. "Human nature!" "Human nature!"--like the tolling of a muffled bell. Bishops and old ladies imagined you could alter these things. Take India--"I've been there. I knew an official who'd had charge of the chaklas. You don't know what chaklas are? Your father knew. If you'd gone riding round any one of the cantonments you'd have seen. Little groups of tents. A hospital not far off. Women in the tents. Out there it's no secret. They're called "Government women." The women are needed by the army. So there they are." Women are "needed." Through the chaos came back clear the memory of my talk with Betty in the train: "Men don't need us as much as we need them." Even Governments, he said, had to recognise human nature, and shape their policies accordingly. I was too young to remember all that talk in the press some years ago, about the mysterious movements of British battleships in the Mediterranean. Instead of hanging about Malta, the ships had gone cruising round the Irish coast. Why? The officials said, for good and sufficient reasons. The chorus of criticism died down. The "reasons" were known to those who had to know. Not enough women at Malta. The British fleet spent some time about the Irish coasts. "Human nature----" "I can do it now!" I cried under my breath, and I stood up. He shot out a hand and pulled me back. "Christ! not while the grey hawk is hovering outside! And your lips are livid." A good thing, he said, that I had still a few minutes. "You have your sister to thank. She is a success. She piles up anticipation. The value of that, to the jaded, is the stock-in-trade of people like our hostess. At a time when her profession is a hundred per cent. more dangerous than it's ever been since the world began, she perfects it--makes it pay in proportion to its danger." Couldn't I trust him to know? He gave me his word: "No indecent haste here. They are adepts. They have learned that the climax is less to the sated than the leading up. The leading up is all." After a second: "How did she get hold of you?" I knew no more than the dead. "Through someone very well informed...." He probed and questioned. I could only shake my head. But my tortured mind flung itself spasmodically from one figure to another in our little world, and felt each one's recoil from my mere unspoken thought. Until--_the little dressmaker_! Her questions ... her pains to establish the fact of our isolation, of our poverty ... her special interest in our aunt. "You haf a photografie--hein?" And then the picture's vanishing. Had it come to this house to serve as model? The Tartar liked "the new coiffure----" Two servants came in. One carried a great silver tray.