Miss Harris approached the corner where sat the two little _bourgeois_ ladies, trailing her long shining train, her whole elegant slimness suggesting something feline. The two foreign ladies accompanied her talking in incomprehensible French. Arduina had to get up and smile very humbly before the Englishwoman recognised her, shook her hand, and spoke with condescending affability. Then Miss Harris sat down, her long tail wound round her legs like that of a reposing cat, and began to talk. She was tired and bored; she had been for a drive in a motor, had had a private audience of the Pope, and in half-an-hour was due at some great lady's reception. She did not look at Regina at all. After a minute she appeared to forget Arduina; a little later, the two foreign ladies also. She seemed talking for her own ears; in her beauty and splendour she was self-sufficient, like a star which scintillates for itself alone. From far and near everybody watched her. Regina trembled with humiliation. In her modest short frock she felt herself disappearing; she was ashamed of her lace scarf; when Miss Harris offered her a cup of tea she repulsed it with an inimical gesture. She felt again that sense of puerile hatred which had assaulted her at the Costanzi on the evening of San Stefano. As they left the hotel she said to her sister-in-law, "I can't think what you came for! Why are you so mean-spirited? Why did you listen so slavishly to that woman who hardly noticed your presence?" "But weren't you listening quite humbly, too?" "I? I'd like to have seized and throttled you all! Good God, what fools you women are!" "My dear Regina," said the other, confounded, "I don't understand you!" "I know you don't. What do you understand? Why do you go to such places? What have you to do with people like that? Don't you take in that they are the lords of the earth and we the slaves?" "But we're the intelligent ones! We are the lords of the future! Don't you hear the clatter of our wooden shoes going up and of their satin slippers coming down?" "We? What, _you_?" said Regina, contemptuously. "Mind that carriage!" cried Arduina, pulling her back. "You see? They drive over us! What's the good of intelligence? What is intelligence compared with a satin train?" "Oh, I see! You're jealous of the satin train," said the other, laughing good-humouredly. "Oh, you're a fool!" cried Regina, beside herself. "Thanks!" said Arduina, unoffended. Returned home, Regina threw herself on the ottoman in the ante-room, and remained there nearly an hour, beating the devil's tattoo with her foot in time to the ticking of the clock, which seemed the heart of the little room. Her own heart was overflown by a wave of humiliating distress. Ah! even the ridiculous Arduina had guessed what ailed her.