It was apparently the combination of this anecdote and Evie's remark before it that broke Miss Simon down. She suddenly collapsed into indignant tears. Every one was uncomfortable. Mrs. Frampton said kindly, 'Come, come, my dear, it's only talk. It isn't worth crying about, I'm sure, with so many real troubles in the world just now.' 'You won't _see_,' sobbed Miss Simon, who looked particularly plain when crying. 'You none of you _see_. Except her'--she indicated Alix--'and she won't talk; she only smiles to herself at all of us. You tell silly tales, and you say silly things, and you think you've scored--but you haven't. It isn't _argument_, that you like men more than women or women more than men. And that man married to Eliza was an idiot, and not a bit funny or clever, and you all think he scored over her.' 'Well, really,' said Sid, and grinned sheepishly at the others. Kate had fetched a glass of water. 'Drink some,' she said kindly. 'It'll make you feel better.' But Miss Simon pushed it aside and mopped her eyes and blew her nose and pulled herself together. 2 'Fancy crying before every one,' thought Evie. 'And just from being in a passion about getting the worst of it in talk. She _is_ a specimen.' 'The boys shouldn't draw Rachel on to make such a silly of herself,' thought young Mrs. Vinney. 'Poor girl, she must have been working too hard, she's quite hysterical,' thought Mrs. Frampton. 'Having her staying with them must draw Vin and Floss very close together,' thought Kate, who had loved Vin long before Floss met him. 'We shan't have any more fun out of this evening; we'll go home,' thought Vincent, and glanced at his wife. 'What a difference between one girl and another,' thought Sid, and gazed at Evie. 'I wonder if many people are like these,' thought Alix, speculating. Were discussions at Violette, discussions in all the thousands of Violettes, always like this? Not argument, not ideas, not facts. Merely statements, quotations rather, of hackneyed and outworn sentiments, prejudices second-hand, yet indomitable, unassailable, undying, and the relation of stories, without relevance or force, and (but this much more rarely, surely) a burst of bitterness and emotion to wind it all up. Curious. Rachel Simon, like the rest, was stupid and ignorant, her brain a chaos of half-assimilated, inaccurate facts (she said Wills when she meant Hill) and crude sentiments. She seemed to belong, oddly, to an outworn age (the late eighties, was it? Alix wasn't old enough to know). But Alix was sorry for her, remembering the look in her face when they had each in turn dealt her a finishing blow. Alix rather wished Evie hadn't made that idiotic remark about men and girls; wished Mrs. Frampton hadn't talked of proper women; wished Kate hadn't said 'But she wasn't'; even wished she herself had joined in a little. Only it was all too inane.... 3