Ever since Caroline had cleared away dinner, they had been discussing the problem of Brunton's inactivity. To Aliette, pride-bound, feeling herself--despite the new alliance with Julia Cavendish--still guilty, still the interloper, it seemed best that they should wait. Silently resenting, yet chiding herself all the while for her resentment, the whole discussion, she had held herself, whenever possible, aloof from it. But now she could hold aloof no longer. No coward in her own love; willing, for herself, to take any and all risks; the suggested meeting filled her with apprehension for Ronnie. "I beg you not to do that," she said. "Why not?" Ronnie laughed. "He can't eat me." "I'd so much rather you didn't. Perhaps he's only waiting because of some difficulty, some legal difficulty. Wouldn't it be better if I wrote to him again, if we both wrote to him? After all, we mustn't forget that"--she stumbled over the phrase--"we're in the wrong." "Writing won't do any good," pronounced Julia. "Ninety-nine letters out of every hundred are perfectly futile. The hundredth--is usually an irrevocable mistake." The novelist, rather pleased with the epigram, sat back in her basketwork chair. For the first time since her quarrel with Ronnie, she had regained that peculiar power of mental detachment--of seeing real personalities, her own included, as characters in a book--which is the exclusive property of the literary temperament. "All the same," she went on, "I can't help feeling that a personal interview would be risky. It might only exacerbate the position." "Risky or not," said a determined Ronnie, "it's the only possible thing to be done. Unless H. B. files his petition at once, we shall have to wait the best part of a year before we can get married. And remember, we haven't only ourselves to consider--there's Aliette's family. _They'll_ have to be told sooner or later. Think how much easier it would be if we could tell them that everything was properly arranged." Julia's newly-regained detachment deserted her. Turning to Aliette, she asked nervously: "But don't _your_ parents know? Haven't you written to them?" "Not yet." Beyond the lamplight, the younger woman's face showed scarcely an emotion. "It seemed so useless. You see, I'm not an only child. There'll be no forgiveness--on their side. Mollie may stand by me. But Eva won't. Mother and Andrew will take Eva's advice. They only cared for my brothers. When my brothers were killed, it was just as if everything had gone out of their lives." And she added--pathetically, thought Julia Cavendish, who, loving her own son more than anything in the world, always found difficulty in realizing how frail is the average tie between parents and grown-up daughters: "Mother's rather fond of Eva's children."