She dressed with even more than her habitual care, reddened her lips attentively, brushed the faintest bloom of pink over her drawn cheeks, and went down--to meet Mrs. Match coming up with a tray. “Oh, Madam, I thought you were too tired.... I was bringing it up to you myself--just a little morsel of chicken.” Susy, glancing past her, saw, through the open door, that the lamps were not lit in the drawing-room. “Oh, no, I’m not tired, thank you. I thought Mrs. Melrose expected friends at dinner!” “Friends at dinner-to-night?” Mrs. Match heaved a despairing sigh. Sometimes, the sigh seemed to say, her mistress put too great a strain upon her. “Why, Mrs. Melrose and Mr. Fulmer were engaged to dine in Paris. They left an hour ago. Mrs. Melrose told me she’d told you,” the house-keeper wailed. Susy kept her little fixed smile. “I must have misunderstood. In that case... well, yes, if it’s no trouble, I believe I will have my tray upstairs.” Slowly she turned, and followed the housekeeper up into the dread solitude she had just left. XIV. THE next day a lot of people turned up unannounced for luncheon. They were not of the far-fetched and the exotic, in whom Mrs. Melrose now specialized, but merely commonplace fashionable people belonging to Susy’s own group, people familiar with the amusing romance of her penniless marriage, and to whom she had to explain (though none of them really listened to the explanation) that Nick was not with her just now but had gone off cruising... cruising in the AEgean with friends... getting up material for his book (this detail had occurred to her in the night). It was the kind of encounter she had most dreaded; but it proved, after all, easy enough to go through compared with those endless hours of turning to and fro, the night before, in the cage of her lonely room. Anything, anything, but to be alone.... Gradually, from the force of habit, she found herself actually in tune with the talk of the luncheon table, interested in the references to absent friends, the light allusions to last year’s loves and quarrels, scandals and absurdities. The women, in their pale summer dresses, were so graceful, indolent and sure of themselves, the men so easy and good-humoured! Perhaps, after all, Susy reflected, it was the world she was meant for, since the other, the brief Paradise of her dreams, had already shut its golden doors upon her. And then, as they sat on the terrace after luncheon, looking across at the yellow tree-tops of the park, one of the women said something--made just an allusion--that Susy would have let pass unnoticed in the old days, but that now filled her with a sudden deep disgust.... She stood up and wandered away, away from them all through the fading garden.