"Yes," said Miss Ingate. "But I'm like you. I don't care passionately for prison. Eh! Eh! I'm not so vehy, vehy fond of it. I don't know Miss Burke, but what a pity she has got six weeks, isn't it? Still, I was vehy much struck by what someone said to me to-day--that you'd be vehy sorry if women _did_ get the vote. I think I should be sorry, too--you know what I mean." "Perfectly," ejaculated Rosamund, with a pleasant smile. "I hope I'm not skidding," said Miss Ingate still more timidly, but also with a sardonic giggle, looking round into the gloom. "I do skid sometimes, you know, and we've just come away from a----" She could not finish. "And Mrs. Moncreiff, if I've got the name right, is she with us, too?" asked Rosamund, miraculously urbane. And added: "I hear she has wealth and is the mistress of it." Audrey jumped up, smiling, and lifting her veil. She could not help smiling. The studio, the lamp, Rosamund with her miraculous self-complacency, Nick with her soft, mad eyes and wistful voice, the blundering ruthless Miss Ingate, all seemed intensely absurd to her. Everything seemed absurd except dancing and revelry and coloured lights and strange disguises and sensuous contacts. She had the most careless contempt, stiffened by a slight loathing, for political movements and every melancholy effort to reform the world. The world did not need reforming and did not want to be reformed. "Perhaps you don't know my story," Audrey began, not realising how she would continue. "I am a widow. I made an unhappy marriage. My husband on the day after our wedding-day began to eat peas with his knife. In a week I was forced to leave him. And a fortnight later I heard that he was dead of blood-poisoning. He had cut his mouth." And she thought: "What is the matter with me? I have ruined myself." All her exultation had collapsed. But Rosamund remarked gravely: "It is a common story." Suddenly there was a movement in the obscure corner where sat the unnamed and unintroduced lady. This lady rose and came towards the table. She was very elegant in dress and manner, and she looked maturely young. "Madame Piriac," announced Rosamund. Audrey recoiled.... Gazing hard at the face, she saw in it a vague but undeniable resemblance to certain admired photographs which had arrived at Moze from France. "Pardon me!" said Madame Piriac in English with a strong French accent. "I shall like very much to hear the details of this story of _petits pois_." The tone of Madame Piriac's question was unexceptionable; it took account of Audrey's mourning attire, and of her youthfulness; but Audrey could formulate no answer to it. Instead of speaking she gave a touch to her veil, and it dropped before her piquant, troubled, inscrutable face like a screen. Miss Ingate said with noticeable calm, but also with the air of a conspirator who sees danger to a most secret machination: "I'm afraid Mrs. Moncreiff won't care to go into details."