And May submitted, and the two women went out of the drawing-room together up the two or three steps and into the corridor. They walked together, both making a harmless, pathetic pretence: the one to think the other had a chill, the other to own that a chill it was, indeed, though not a bad chill! What was Gwendolen doing now? Was she crying? "Poor thing, poor little neglected thing!" thought Lady Dashwood. "Marian can be very high-handed," she whispered to May. "I have known her do many arbitrary things. She would be quite capable of---- But what's the good! Poor Gwen! I couldn't pity her before, I felt too hard. But now Jim is safe I can think reasonably. I'm sorry for her. But," she added, "I'm not sorry for Belinda." Now that they had reached May's room, May declared that she was not as sure as she had been that she had got a chill. But the chill could not be dropped like that. Lady Dashwood felt the impropriety of suddenly giving up the chill, and she left the room and went to search for the infallible cure and preventive. As she did so she began to wonder why she could not will to have no headache. She was so happy that a headache was ridiculous. When she returned, May was in her dressing-gown and was moving about with decision, and her limbs no longer trembled. "I don't pity Belinda," said Lady Dashwood, pretending not to see the change. "I don't pity her, though I suppose that she, too, is merely a symptom of the times we live in." Here she began to pour out a dose from the bottle in her hand. "It can't be a good thing, May, for the community that there should be women who live to organise amusement for themselves; who merely live to meet each other and their men folk, and play about. It can't be good for the community? We ought all to work, May, every one of us. Writing invitations to each other to come and play, buying things for ourselves, seeing dressmakers isn't work. There, May!" She held out the glass to May. Each kept up the pretence--pretending with solemnity that May had been trembling because she had possibly got a chill. It was a pretence that was necessary. It was a pretence that covered and protected both of them. It was a brave pretence. "No," said Lady Dashwood again, and firmly, as she released the glass. "It isn't good for the community to have a class of busy idlers at the top of the ladder." May had taken the glass, and now she tipped it up and drank the contents. They were hot and stinging! Then May broke her silence, and imitating a voice that Lady Dashwood knew well, uttered these words: "Oh, damn the community!" "Was it very nasty?" said Lady Dashwood, laughing. "Ah, May, I can laugh now at Belinda! Alas! I can laugh!" CHAPTER XXV CONFESSIONS