As far as I could make out, Pique had begun it. There had been a slight difficulty with another man who was not a gentleman although he was a Count--fancy, at Lady Islington's?--and he had been rude to Ariadne about a dance, and Ariadne had appealed to Simon although he wasn't so near her as some other men, and Simon had at once insulted the other man, and had danced with Ariadne all the rest of the evening to spite him and Lady Scilly, who had brought him, and whose new "mash" he was. I believe he's the German chauffeur I saw in her car. But Ariadne would have it that it was the fan business that had brought it on--that fan he gave her at Whitby he had broken at Whitby, and he had never bought her a new one. We had often talked about it, but of course never mentioned it to Simon. Lady Islington is Simon's Aunt Meg, and he is awfully afraid of her. After the row with the chauffeur Count, Ariadne had felt quite strange and frightened--he made nasty speeches, as not gentlemen do when they are riled--and Simon had taken her to a window-seat in a long gallery sort of staircase. She sat beside him for a long while feeling as if she could not breathe, long after all fear of the other man had passed away. She thought it could hardly be that still, and yet she felt as if a cold hand or a key, like when your nose is bleeding, was being put down her spine, though of course there was none. Simon didn't say anything, he seemed to be thinking, but she dared not look at him for some reason or other. But she said she wished, as she sat there, more than anything else she had ever wished in the world, more than she had wished I would get better of the scarlet fever when I was a baby--that he would take hold of her hand that was lying in her lap. She kept on staring at it, imagining his taking hold of it, "willing" him to do it. She wanted him to do this so badly that she nearly screamed and asked him right out; but no, it would have been no good unless he had done it of his own free-will. The music had not begun, and she seemed to fancy it would not begin until Simon had done that silly little thing. She felt somehow that he was thinking of this too, or something like it--something to do with her, at any rate. She hated explaining all this to me, but I made her, for she had always solemnly promised to me she would tell me exactly how her first offer took place. Then the music began and the people on the stairs got up, and some of them were sure to come past where they were. She says she felt Simon take a resolution of some kind, and yet all he said was, "Have you got a fan?" Ariadne didn't know in the least what he meant, but she knew it was all part of the thing that had to happen now, and at once answered quite truly-- "I haven't got one. You broke it." "And didn't I give you a new one? What an objectionable brute I am! Well, then we must do without. I only hope my Aunt Meg doesn't see me?" And he kissed her.