The door-bell rang. Fluffy and Horace entered. The sparkle of laughter was in their eyes. They brought with them an atmosphere of love-making. As Horace helped her out of her sables, his hands loitered on her shoulders caressingly. She turned to the others with the sad little smile of one who summons all the world to her protection. She looked extremely beautiful and lavish, with her daffodil-colored hair floating like a cloud above her blue, hypnotic eyes. “I’m so depressed. I do hope you’ll cheer me. Fancy having to learn a new part and to worry with rehearsals, and then to go on the road again.” She sat down on the couch, her hands tucked beneath her, her arms making handles for the vase of her body. “I wish I wasn’t an actress. I wish I were just a wife in a dear little house--a sort of nest--with a kind man to take care of me. Only----” She glanced at Horace. “Only I never met the always kind man.” “Women never know their own minds,” said Horace. “A law ought to be passed to compel every woman who’s loved to marry.” At supper Desire’s place was empty. Teddy turned to Vashti and whispered, “Where is she? Isn’t she coming?” Vashti looked at him with her slow, comprehending smile. “She’s coming. But she’s thinking. I wonder what about.” At that moment Desire entered and slipped into the vacant chair beside him. All through the meal as the atmosphere brightened, she sat silent. She seemed to be doing her best not to notice that he was there. The talk turned on women and what men thought of them. “Men may think what they like, but they never know us,”. Fluffy said. “Love’s a game of guess-work and deception. Half the time when a man’s blaming a woman for not having married him, he ought to be down on his knees thanking her for having spared him. She knows what she is, and she knows what he is. He doesn’t. Men invariably confuse friendship with matrimony. They can’t understand how women can enjoy their company and yet couldn’t fancy them as husbands.” Desire woke up. “And the worst of it is that sometimes we women can’t understand ourselves.” “Some men can.” Vashti glanced at Mr. Dak, whom she had so often praised for his understanding. Mr. Dak returned her gaze as non-committingly as a Buddhish idol. Horace leant forward across the table. The gleam of tolerant amusement was never absent from his eyes. “You ladies are all talking nonsense, and you know it. Even little Desire over there knows it. Directly you begin to like a man you begin to think of marriage--only some of you begin to think of running away from it ‘Between men and women there is no friendship possible. Passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship’--you remember Lord Darlington’s lines. When love is trifled with, it sours into hatred. Every man who loves a woman has his moments when he hates her intensely.” “Did you ever hate me?” Fluffy covered his hand to insure the answer she required.