"Ethel? Who's she?" In pursuance of the habits of the painter-poet Mr. and Mrs. Macmaster called each other always "Guggums!" Christopher had in all probability never heard Mrs. Duchemin's Christian names since his disaster had swept all names out of his head. He came to the conclusion that the quadrangle was not a space sufficiently confined to afford much bursting resistance to a bomb. The girl said: "Edith Ethel Duchemin! Mrs. Macmaster that is!" She was obviously waiting intensely. Christopher said with vagueness: "No! Certainly not! . . . What was said?" Mark Tietjens was leaning forward over the kerb in front of the green-stained shelter, like a child over a brookside. He was obviously waiting, quite patient, swinging his umbrella by the hook. He appeared to have no other means of self-expression. The girl was saying that when she had rung up Christopher that morning a voice had said, without any preparation at all: the girl repeated, without any preparation at all: "You'd better keep off the grass if you're the Wannop girl. Mrs. Duchemin is my husband's mistress already. You keep off!" Christopher said: "She said that, did she?" He was wondering how Mark kept his balance, really. The girl said nothing more. She was waiting. With an insistence that seemed to draw him: a sort of sucking in of his personality. It was unbearable. He made his last effort of that afternoon. He said: "Damn it all. How could you ask such a tomfool question? _You_! I took you to be an intelligent person. The only intelligent person I know. Don't you _know_ me?" She made an effort to retain her stiffening. "Isn't Mrs. Tietjens a truthful person?" she asked. "I thought she looked truthful when I saw her at Vincent and Ethel's." He said: "What she says she believes. But she only believes what she wants to, for the moment. If you call that truthful, she's truthful. I've nothing against her." He said to himself: "I'm not going to appeal to her by damning my wife." She seemed to go all of a piece, as the hard outline goes suddenly out of a piece of lump sugar upon which you drop water. "Oh," she said, "it _isn't_ true. I _knew_ it wasn't true." She began to cry. Christopher said: "Come along. I've been answering tomfool questions all day. I've got another tomfool to see here, then I'm through." She said: "I can't come with you, crying like this." He answered: "Oh, yes you can. This is the place where women cry." He added: "Besides there's Mark. He's a comforting ass." He delivered her over to Mark. "Here, look after Miss Wannop," he said. "You want to talk to her anyhow, don't you?" and he hurried ahead of them like a fussy shopwalker into the lugubrious hall. He felt that, if he didn't come soon to an unemotional ass in red, green, blue or pink tabs, who would have fishlike eyes and would ask the sort of questions that fishes ask in tanks, he, too, must break down and cry. With relief! However, that was a place where men cried, too!