"Only a kid's game," she said. "Nothing at all." Alf said nothing, looking at neither girl. Emmy tried to speak again; but at first the words would not come. Finally she went on, with dreadful understanding. "Didn't you want to take me, Alf? Did you want her to go?" It was as though her short absence, perhaps even the change of costume, had worked a curious and cognate change in her mind. Perhaps it was that in her flushed happiness she had forgotten to be suspicious, or had blindly misread the meanings of the earlier colloquy, as a result of which the invitation had been given. "Don't be so silly!" quickly cried Jenny. "Of course he wanted you to go!" "Alf!" Emmy's eyes were fixed upon him with a look of urgent entreaty. She looked at Alf with all the love, all the extraordinary intimate confidence with which women of her class do so generally regard the men they love, ready to yield judgment itself to his decision. When he did not answer, but stood still before them like a red-faced boy, staring down at the floor, she seemed to shudder, and began despairingly to unfasten the buttons of her thick coat. Jenny darted up and ran to check the process. "Don't be a fool!" she breathed. "Like that! You've got no time for a scene." Turning to Alf, she motioned him with a swift gesture to the door. "Look sharp!" she cried. "I'm not going!" Emmy struggled with Jenny's restraining hands. "It's no good fussing me, Jenny.... I'm not going. He can take who he likes. But it's not me." Alf and Jenny exchanged angry glances, each bitterly blaming the other. "Em!" Jenny shouted. "You're mad!" "No, I'm not. Let me go! Let me go! He didn't want me to go. He wanted you. Oh, I knew it. I was a fool to think he wanted me." Then, looking with a sort of crazed disdain at Jenny, she said coolly, "Well, how is it you're not ready? Don't you see your _substitute's_ waiting! Your _land_ lover!" "Land!" cried Alf. "Land! A sailor!" He flushed deeply, raising his arms a little as if to ward off some further revelation. Jenny, desperate, had her hands higher than her head, protestingly quelling the scene. In a loud voice she checked them. "Do ... not ... be ... fools!" she cried. "What's all the fuss about? Simply because Alf's a born booby, standing there like a fool! I can't go. I wouldn't go--even if he wanted me. But he wants you!" She again seized Emmy, delaying once more Emmy's mechanical unfastening of the big buttons of her coat. "Alf! Get your coat. Get her out of the house! I never heard such rubbish! Alf, say ... tell her you meant her to go! Say it wasn't me!" "I shouldn't believe him," Emmy said, clearly. "I know I saw him holding your hand." Jenny laughed hysterically. "What a fuss!" she exclaimed. "He's been doing palmistry--reading it. All about ... what's going to happen to me. Wasn't it, Alf!" Emmy disregarded her, watching Alf's too-transparent uneasiness. "You always _were_ a little lying beast," she said, venomously. "A trickster."