That last thought rekindled Mollie's blushes. Succeed as she might in curbing her tongue, she could not curb her feelings. She fell to wondering if Jimmy _would_ ask her to marry him, to speculating whether, even if their friendship so abruptly broken off should be renewed (as she had subconsciously hoped it would be renewed when she invited herself to London), whether, even if Jimmy did ask her to marry him, she would be capable of sacrificing Aliette. Would she not be forced to make conditions--conditions that no man in Jimmy's position could possibly accept? Would she not be forced to say: "If I marry you, you'll have to let me receive my sister and my sister's lover"? "How about the Wilberforce man?" Betty's words interrupted reverie. "Does he know you're in town?" "Yes," admitted Mollie. "You still write to each other then?" "Only occasionally." "My dear, how exciting! When did you hear from him last?" But at that Aliette's sister broke off the conversation with a wry "Betty, I simply won't be cross-examined." "You needn't get ratty, dear thing," retorted the grass-widow. "_I_ don't want to pry into your secrets. But"--she rustled up from her chair, and made a movement to begin undressing--"if he _should_ write that he's coming to see you, for goodness' sake try and make yourself look a little less of a 'patient Griselda.' What about face-massage? I know a man in Sloane Street who's simply wonderful!" 2 Aliette, whom Mollie visited next day, was even more shocked than Betty Masterman at the change in her sister's appearance. The girl seemed utterly altered, utterly different from the fancy-free maiden of Moor Park. She came into the connubial room nervously; almost forgot to kiss; entirely forgot to inquire after Ronnie; refused to take off her hat, and sat down on the edge of the hard sofa gingerly as though it had been an omnibus seat. "Rather awful, isn't it?" Aliette, with a comprehensive glance at her surroundings, broke the social ice. "You mustn't mind." "I don't mind. But it is rather awful." A pause. "I suppose you had to do it, Alie?" "Do what? Come and live here?" "No. The whole thing." Aliette did not answer, and her sister went on. "I wish you hadn't had to. It's been simply rotten at home. Mother and dad----" She broke off, biting her lip. "_They_ aren't so bad really; it's Eva who's putrid." "Eva never did like either of us." For the first time in their lives, the sisters felt shy with one another. Caroline Staley, entering, broad-hipped, a smile on her full lips and a tea-tray in her large hands, noticed the tension. "My, Miss Mollie!" ejaculated the tactful Caroline, "but you aren't looking yourself at all. You ought to take that hat off and lie down awhile." Tea relaxed the tension; but made intimate conversation no easier. Between them and their old intimacy rose--as it seemed--insurmountable barriers. It was Mollie who, involuntarily, pulled those barriers down.