"No," said Jeff. "Stay here, Lydia. That damnable necklace has made trouble enough. It goes slipping through our lives like a detestable snake, and now it's stopped with its original owner, I propose it shall stay stopped. It's like a property in a play. It goes about from hand to hand to hand, to bring out something in the play. And after all the play isn't about the necklace. It's about us--us--you and Esther and Choate and Madame Beattie and me. It's betraying us to ourselves. If it hadn't been for the necklace in the first place and Esther's coveting it, I might have been a greasy citizen of Addington instead of a queer half labourer and half loafer; my father wouldn't have lost his nerve, Choate wouldn't have been in love with Esther, and you wouldn't have been doing divine childish things to bail me out of my destiny." Lydia selected from this the fact that hit her hardest. "Is Alston Choate in love with Esther?" "He thinks he is." "Then I must tell Anne." "For God's sake, no! Lydia, I'm talking to you down here in the dusk as if you were the sky or that star up there. The star doesn't tell." "But Anne worships him." "Do you mean she's in love with Choate?" "No," said Lydia, "I don't mean that. I mean she thinks he's the most beautiful person she ever saw." "Then let her keep on thinking so," said Jeff. "And sometime he'll think that of her." Lydia was indignant. "If you think Anne----" she began, and he stopped her. "No, no. Anne is a young angel. Only a feeling of that kind--Lydia, I am furious because I can't talk to you as I want to." "Why can't you?" asked Lydia. "Because it isn't possible, between men and women. Unless they've got a right to. Unless they can throw even their shams and vanities away, and live in each other's minds. I am married to Esther. If I tell you I won't ask you into my mind because I am married to her you'll think I am a hero. And if I do ask you in, you'll come--for you are very brave--and you'll see things I don't want you to see." "You mean," said Lydia, "see that you know I am in love with you. Well, I'm not, Jeff, not in the way people talk about. Not that way." His quick sense of her meanings supplied what she did not say: not Esther's way. She scorned that, with a youthful scorn, the feline domination of Esther. If that was being in love she would have none of it. But Jeff was not actually thinking of her. He was listening to some voice inside himself, an interrogatory voice, an irresponsible one, not warning him but telling him: "You do care. You care about Lydia. That's what you're facing--love--love of Lydia."