Cynthia was not scrupulous. She forced her way through the reserves and defences of the younger girl like a bumble-bee clawing and screwing and buzzing into the heart of a half-shut flower. She found much to puzzle her, more to amuse, but nothing to justify her gorgeous suspicions. She confessed them one day to Louise, in a burst of confidence, and Louise was hugely delighted. Cynthia always delighted her. She liked her jolly ways, and her sense of fun, and was quite convinced that she had no sense of humour at all. The conviction saved her some suffering. She was jealous, inevitably jealous, of the brilliant new-comer, painfully alive to, exaggerating and writhing at Clare's preoccupation with her; yet the warped shrewdness proper to her state of mind, she could calculate with painful accuracy how long it would take Clare to tire of her new toy, what qualities would soonest induce satiety. She guessed, hoped, prayed, that Miss Hartill would discover, as she had done, Cynthia's lack of conscious humour, the obtuseness that underlay her boisterous ease. She was not fine enough to hold Miss Hartill long: she would grow too fond of Miss Hartill: would, in the terrible craving to render up her whole soul, expose herself in all her crudity. Louise did, for a while, soothe the jealousy, the tearing, clawing beast in her breast, with that comfortable conviction. That her reasoning was subconscious, that she was unaware of the process of analysation and deduction that led to her conclusions, is immaterial; she felt--and as she felt, she acted; her reasons for her actions were sounder than she dreamed. She made mistakes often enough: her profound occupation with Clare Hartill had induced a spiritual myopia; the rest of the world was out of focus; and it was her initial misunderstanding of Cynthia Griffiths that led to their curious, unaffectionate alliance. In all Louise's ponderings, she had never doubted but that Cynthia would, like the rest of the world, fall down and worship at the shrine of Clare Hartill. Cynthia Griffiths, amused spectator of an alien life, did nothing of the kind. And Louise--amazed, fiercely incredulous, all-suspicious, yet finally convinced of the inconceivable fact--it had a curious effect. She should have been indignant, contemptuous of the obtuse creature--as, indeed, in a sense, she was--but chiefly she was conscious of a lifted weight--of an enormous and hysterical gratitude.