Nan shook her head. “Not like that, as though you wanted to. You haven't done it since we were girls.” Jehane, half-ashamed of her impulsiveness, looked away. “We've been too busy to make a fuss. But the feeling's been there.” “I don't call that making a fuss--and it isn't because we've been busy. We've been drifting apart--playing a game of hide and seek with one another.” Then, before Jehane could become casual, “I do so want to be friends.” “And aren't we friends?” “Not in the old sense. We're hard and suspicious, and doubt one another.” “Then let's be friends in the old sense, you dear little Nan.” Like Peter, when Nan had made up her mind to be tender, no one could resist her. She treated Jehane with sweet envy, because of the baby on her breast. She made believe that Jehane was fragile, and kept her in bed for breakfast. After Barrington had been seen off to business, she went up to help her dress. It was in this hour that Jehane was most confessional. She recalled the dreamy Oxford days, with their desperate dreams of love, when life was unexperienced. She even spoke of the great disillusion that had followed; she spoke in general terms to include all wives and husbands. She spoke of Waffles as he had been, only that she might praise him as he had become. Her fierce loyalty to him, her wilful consistency in shutting her eyes to his faults, was a form of self-respect which never faltered. Nan found a difficulty in pretending that he was all that was claimed for him; they both knew that he was not. Still, she was convinced that he was mending. Barrington, noticing the change in Jehane, said, “There are only two things that could do it: money or love. It isn't love, so we have to believe that it's----” But it was love--love for Barrington and the effect of being near him. Even she herself wondered at how the old infatuation had lasted. Her very bitterness had been a form of love. Now that he went out of his way to be kind to her all the passion in her responded--but she had to disguise its response. At night, with another man's child in her arms, she lay awake. In the darkness and silence she told herself stories, juggling with circumstances. Once she heard a tapping on her door. She crouched against the wall, shuddering. The handle turned. Nan stood on the threshold. “I thought I heard you moving.” Guilty and angry, Jehane said nothing. Nan groped her way toward the bed and found it empty. “Jehane, Janey,” she called. Then she saw her, stooped to her and caught her in her arms, begging for an explanation. Just as once, when she had asserted, “Jehane I _did_, I _did_ play fair,” so now she got no answer--only, “I'm stupid, dear; I'll be better in the morning.” Cold with alarm, Nan crept downstairs and hid herself in Billy's arms. He was too sleepy to give the matter much attention. “She's odd, darling. Never understood her. Poor old Ocky!”