When she had put on her hat, it flashed into her mind that Mr. Bingham was coming to dinner, ostensibly to meet her. After their talk together she must write to him. She must scribble a little note and get it taken to All Souls. She must tell him that she had to leave Oxford quite unexpectedly. She sat down at her writing table and took up a pen. She wrote a few words, and thought the words too cold and too abrupt. She must begin again, and she tore up the letter and threw it into the waste-paper basket. She wanted to write sympathetically and yet not to appear to think he needed sympathy. She wanted to write as if she was very much disappointed at not meeting him again, but without putting it into words that would sound self-assured--as if she knew and counted on his being grateful at her disappointment. And indeed, she thought, he was not much in love with her. Why should he be? That was a question May always asked herself when a man professed to be in love with her. Why? Why in the name of all----, etc. May always failed to see why. This lack of vanity in May had led many people, who did not understand her, to accuse her of flirting. But May, in writing to Bingham, realised to the full _his_ attractions. He was too interesting a personality to be going about unclaimed. He ought to make some woman happy--some nice woman--not herself. She began a fresh letter and was at the first sentence when a knock came at the door. "Come in," she called. In came Louise, looking full of sinister importance. Her hair, which was never very tidy, looked as if it had taken an intelligent interest in some crisis. Louise glanced round the room at the luggage, at the coat, at the hat on May's head. "Oh, Madame, what a desolation!" cried Louise, and she wrung her hands. "I have packed very well, Louise," said May Dashwood. "I am accustomed to do it--I have no maid." "Oh, what a desolation!" repeated Louise, as she advanced further into the room. Then she stopped and announced, with an affectation of horrible composure: "I come to inform Madame that it is impossible for her to depart." May put down her pen. "What is the matter, Louise?" Louise drew in her breath. "My lady suffers," she began, and as she proceeded her words flowed more and more quickly: "while Madame prepares to forsake her, my lady faints upon the floor in the breakfast parlour, she expires." May rose, her heart beating. "She now swallows a glass of brandy and a biscuit brought by Mrs. Robinson, who is so slow, so slow and who understands nothing, but has the keys. I call and I call, eh bien, I call--oh, but what slowness, what insupportable delay." May put her letter inside the writing case and moved away from the writing-table. She was composed now. "Is she very ill?" she asked quietly.