“Why of course!” came a deep, laughing voice. She started round, but nobody was to be seen. “I expect it’s that man again!” she said to herself. “It really _is_ remarkable, you know. I consider it’s a remarkable thing that I never really wanted a man—_any_ man. And there I am over thirty. It _is_ curious. Whether it’s something wrong with me, or right with me, I can’t say. I don’t know till I’ve proved it. But I believe, if that man kept on laughing, something would happen to me.” She smelt the curious smell of almond blossom in the room, and heard the distant laugh again. “I do wonder why Marchbanks went with that woman last night. Whatever could he want of her?—or she him? So strange, as if they both had made up their minds to something! How extraordinarily puzzling life is! So messy, it all seems. “Why does nobody ever laugh in life like that man. He _did_ seem so wonderful. So scornful! And so proud! And so real! With those laughing, scornful, amazing eyes, just laughing and disappearing again. I can’t imagine him chasing any woman, thank goodness. It’s all so messy. My policeman would be messy if one would let him: like a dog. I do dislike dogs, really I do. And men do seem so doggy!” But even while she mused, she began to laugh again to herself with a long, low chuckle. How wonderful of that man to come and laugh like that and make the sky crack and shrivel like an old skin. Wasn’t he wonderful! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he just touched her. Even touched her. She felt, if he touched her, she herself would emerge new and tender out of an old, hard skin. She was gazing abstractedly out of the window. “There he comes, just now,” she said abruptly. But she meant Marchbanks, not the laughing man. There he came, his hands still shoved down in his overcoat pockets, his head still rather furtively ducked, in the bowler hat, and his legs still rather shambling. He came hurrying across the road, not looking up, deep in thought, no doubt. Thinking profoundly, with agonies of agitation, no doubt about his last night’s experience. It made her laugh. She, watching from the window above, burst into a long laugh, and the canaries went off their heads again. He was in the hall below. His resonant voice was calling, rather imperiously: “James! Are you coming down?” “No,” she called. “You come up.” He came up two at a time, as if his feet were a bit savage with the stairs for obstructing him. In the doorway he stood staring at her with a vacant, sardonic look, his gray eyes moving with a queer light And she looked back at him with a curious, rather haughty carelessness. “Don’t you want your breakfast?” she asked. It was his custom to come and take breakfast with her each morning. “No,” he answered loudly. “I went to a tea shop.” “Don’t shout,” she said. “I can hear you quite well.” He looked at her with mockery and a touch of malice. “I believe you always could,” he said, still loudly.