'Is that all? Well, you're the only person I ever meet--by appointment, at any rate.' 'Well--the Ottleys!' His eye instinctively travelled to a photograph of Edith, all tulle and roses; a rather fascinating portrait. 'What about _her_?' asked Mavis. 'What price Mrs Ottley?' 'Really, Mavis!--What price? No price. Nothing about her; she's just a great friend of mine. I think I told you that before. ... What a frightfully bright light there is in the room,' Vincy said. He got up and drew the blind down. He came back to her. 'Your hair's coming down,' he remarked. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'But at the back it generally is.' 'Don't move--let me do it.' Pretending to arrange it, he took all the hairpins out, and the cloud of dark red hair fell down on her shoulders. 'I like your hair, Mavis.' * * * * * 'It seems too awful I should have been with you such a long time this afternoon,' she exclaimed. 'It _isn't_ long.' 'And sometimes it seems so dreadful to think I can't be with you always.' 'Yes, doesn't it? Mavis dear, will you do up your hair and come out to dinner?' 'Vincy dear, I think I'd better not, because of Aunt Jessie.' 'Oh, very well; all right. Then you will another time?' 'Oh, you don't want me to stay?' 'Yes, I do; do stay.' 'No, next time--next Tuesday.' 'Very well, very well.' He took a dark red carnation out of one of the vases and pinned it on to her coat. 'The next time I see you,' she said, 'I want to have a long, _long_ talk.' 'Oh yes; we must, mustn't we?' He took her downstairs, put her into a cab. It was half-past six. He felt something false, worrying, unreliable and incalculable in Mavis. She didn't seem real.... He wished she were fortunate and happy; but he wished even more that he were never going to see her again. And still!... He walked a little way, then got into a taxi and drove to see Edith. When he was in this peculiar condition of mind--the odd mixture of self-reproach, satisfaction, amusement and boredom that he felt now --he always went to see Edith, throwing himself into the little affairs of her life as if he had nothing else on his mind. He was a little anxious about Edith. It seemed to him that since Aylmer had been away she had altered a little. CHAPTER XVI More of the Mitchells Edith had become an immense favourite with the Mitchells. They hardly ever had any entertainment without her. Her success with their friends delighted Mrs Mitchell, who was not capable of commonplace feminine jealousy, and who regarded Edith as a find of her own. She often reproached Winthrop, her husband, for having known Bruce eight years without discovering his charming wife.