"Ah, poor mother!" she said. "I had forgotten about you, because I was so happy myself. I am sorry for you, too. It is awful! But what am I to do?" "You are to come home with me now," she said. But Madge no longer looked to her for her orders. It was for this cause, after all, that a woman also should leave her father and mother, and her allegiance was already elsewhere. "No; you had better wait a little," said Evelyn, as her glance appealed to him. "There are things we must talk about at once, things that you and I must settle." Madge took this; this came from the authentic source. "I am not coming home yet," she said to her mother. Then Lady Ellington used unnecessary violence; the door banged behind her. But again her quick, cool brain was right in deciding not to stop, to wrangle, to expostulate, though a woman more stupid than she might have done so. Had she been less wise, she would have made a scene, have talked about the Fifth Commandment, have practically forced Madge, as she could no doubt have done, to come with her. But she was clever enough to see that there was no use in that. The fat was in the fire, so why pretend it was not? She could no doubt delay the actual frizzling for an hour or a day, but where was the use? If anything could still be done, the scene of the operations was not here. But she did not believe that it was all up yet, though here a stupider woman might, perhaps, have arrived at more correct conclusions. She still clung to her plotting, her planning, as if plans ever made even steerage-way against passion. And even for this forlorn hope she had to think, and think hard, whereas, those she had left behind her in the studio did not have to think at all. But her destination, anyhow, was clear enough; she had to go to see Philip. What exactly she should say to him was another question; that had to be thought out while the motor pursued its noiseless, shifting way through the traffic, steering, as a fish steers upstream, avoiding obstacles by a mere turn of the fin, imperceptible to the eye as was the movement of the steerage-wheel.