"Give me a cigarette if you have one," she said. "I'm afraid I've picked up that habit here. All the girls do it: there's a cigarette-case in their bags if there's nothing else." And when I had given her a light, she put her elbows on the table again, her wrists and forearms fell into an attitude that really made me sorrow for Billy, and she said: "Well, what is it?" With no more waste of words than she herself had used, I told her of Miss Levey's voracious curiosity, of Evie's perplexed sense of something unexplained, and of my own unsuccessful attempt to have my eggs and my omelette too. She listened attentively: the change of which I shall speak in a moment did not come all at once. Other girls had now come into the Club, and two or three of them were gathered about a brown-paper parcel, some purchase of dress material or other which they were discussing with animation. Others fetched cups of tea from the saloon bar counter, eating and drinking, perched carelessly on the ends of tables, the spiral twist of the work of their stockings telling how readily they got into and out of their clothes. Before I had finished my story Louie interrupted me with the first of a little series of detached remarks. "One moment," she said. "When do you start--this Consolidation, I mean?" "In a few weeks. We shall send some of the men on in advance in about a fortnight. Why?" "You don't intend to take Miriam Levey over with you?" "I do not." "You don't suppose she doesn't know that?" "Well?" "Well--but go on." She made a little gesture. "I interrupted you." I went on. "Half-a-minute," she came in again presently. "All this was quite---- I mean, there was no quarrel?" "With Evie? No--oh, no, no." "Well----" And the next time she interrupted me was merely to ask me whether I had another cigarette. I admit that there had come over me as I had talked an increasing sense of the burden I had placed upon her. Nor do I mean that I had not had this sense before. I had, indeed, thought of little else during my walk to Chalfont the previous day. But it is yet another coin added to the price of a righteous but unlicenced slaying that a man's selfishness becomes merely inordinate. I had known more or less what she must bear; exactly what she had to bear it with I had taken for granted. She had perhaps herself to thank for that, and that tense and incredible calm she had shown on the night I had dined at the Berkeley. I had known the depths of her womanliness that other night; soon I was to learn the shallows of her femininity. "Well," she said, when at last I had finished, "I really don't see what else you expected. And," she went on, but more slowly, and somehow as if she didn't quite trust herself, "I don't see either what you expect of me. I told you what I thought before." "You mean that I should have to tell her?" "Yes." "Well, tell me why." "You've just told me why."