Alexandra shrank from meeting Woolf because instinctively she guessed the kind of man he was. The photograph almost told her. It showed her a man, not a gentleman, yet whose money bought him the right of way amongst gentlemen, the type of man who would assume that every woman, not a lady, had her price. She felt sorry for Maggy. "I will meet him if you’re very keen about it," she said at length. It seemed so grudging, so ungrateful to refuse the one thing required of her. Maggy would have done, had done, more than that for her. She acknowledged the concession now with a spontaneous hug. "I’ll fix a day. We’ll have lunch together," she said. "It makes me so happy, Lexie, to think I’ve got you again—my friend. Men say women can’t be friends. They don’t know. Have another look round before you go. You do think it nice, don’t you? Fred’s taken it on a three years’ agreement." "Is he married?" asked Alexandra suddenly. "No." "Then surely he might marry you." "He would never marry me," said Maggy. "I don’t talk about it. I don’t think of it. If he thought I’d got such an idea in my head I don’t believe he’d want me any longer. He’d hate to be tied down to anything or anybody for longer than a three years’ agreement." An oppression fell on Alexandra. The room, which had been flooded by the afternoon sun, was in shade now. It looked colder, less intimate. One saw that it was a room whose furniture had been provided _en bloc_ by a Company—the Company that owned the flats. There was no individual taste about it. There was nothing permanent about it. It was not a home, and was not meant to be one. "But after three years—" Alexandra began anxiously. Maggy shut her eyes. "If you ever love a man," she said, "you’ll know one doesn’t think in years. One simply feels—in minutes." XIV Alexandra did not have to avail herself of Maggy’s offer of her car for the purpose of visiting the various agencies. That evening she received a post-card from Stannard requesting her to call on Mrs. Hugh Lambert at her house in South Kensington. Mrs. Lambert’s name was familiar to her as that of the wife of a leading actor-manager on whose stage she was never seen. She toured the provinces with plays of her own, while he remained in London or visited New York, in both of which cities he was the idol of a vast number of impressionable women.