“That’s very pretty,” laughed Olivia, with a swift, enveloping glance at the slight, inconspicuous youth who had done such wonderful things. “I’ve not thought of myself as a landlady before. I hope I don’t look like one.” Visions of myriad Bloomsbury lodging-houses at whose doors he had knocked after he had left the tiny room in Cherbury Mews, and of the strange middle-aged women of faded gentility whom he had interviewed within those doors, rose before Triona’s eyes, and he laughed too. For under the strong electric light of the portico, unkind to most of the other waiting women, showing up lines and hollows and artificialities of complexion, she looked as fresh and young as a child on a May morning. The open theatre wrap revealed her slender girlish figure, sketchily clad in a flame-coloured garment; and, with the light in her eyes and her little dark head proudly poised, she stood before the man’s fancy as the flame of youth. She turned to Olifant. “Are you in town?” “For a few days. Getting rid of cobwebs.” “I’d lend you quite a nice broom, if you could find time to come and see me. Besides, I do want to hear about my beloved Polly.” “I shall be delighted,” said Olifant. They arranged that he should come to tea at the flat the following day. “And if so famous a person as Mr. Triona would honour me, too?” “Dare I?” he asked. “It’s on the fifth floor, but there’s a lift.” She saw Mauregard hurrying up. With a “Four-thirty, then,” and a smile of adieu, she turned and joined Mauregard. “Shall we go on to Percy’s?” asked the young Frenchman, standing at the door of the brougham. Olivia conceived a sudden distaste for Percy’s. “Not unless you particularly want to.” “I? Good Lord!” said he. “Why do you ever go, if it bores you like that?” she asked as the brougham started Victoria-wards. “_Ce que femme veut, Mauregard le veut._” “I suppose that is why you’ve never made love to me.” “How?” he asked, surprised out of his perfect English idiom. “I’ve wanted you not to make love to me, and you haven’t.” “But how could I make love to you, when I have been persecuting you with the confessions of my unhappy love affairs?” “One can always find a means,” said Olivia. “That’s why I like you. You are such a good friend.”