"Were you ever in a situation which you felt you had to swing alone? You know you could get help; you know you could count on sympathy; but whenever you’re impelled to appeal for either something holds you back." "I never was in such a situation, but I can imagine what it’s like. May I ask one question?" I felt obliged to grant the permission. "Is it of the nature of what is generally called trouble?" "It’s of the nature of what is generally called misfortune." "And I suppose I mustn’t say so much as that I’m sorry." "You could say that much," I smiled, "if you didn’t say any more." She repeated the weary gesture of a few minutes earlier, a slight tossing outward of both hands, with a heavy drop against the sides. "What a life!" As she began to move on once more I spoke as I walked beside her. "What’s the matter with life?" Again she paused to confront me. In her eyes gold lights gleamed in the brown depths of the irises. "What sense is there in a civilization that cuts us all off from each other? We’re like prisoners in solitary confinement—you in one cell and Boyd in another and Lulu in another and I in another, and everybody else in his own or her own and no communication or exchange of help between us. It’s—it’s monstrous." The half-choked passion of her words took me the more by surprise for the reason that she treated me as if the defects of our civilization were my fault. Joining Lydia Blair and taking her by the arm, she led the way back to the motor, while I was left to pilot Drinkwater, who carried the tea-basket. During the drive back to town our hostess scarcely spoke, and not once to me directly. *CHAPTER XI* But I was troubled by all this, and puzzled. That I couldn’t afford the complication of a love-affair will be evident to any one; but that a love-affair threatened was by no means clear. As far as that went it was as fatuous on my part to think of it as it would have been for Drinkwater, except in so far as it involved danger to myself. For a few hours that danger did not suggest itself. That is, I was so busy speculating as to Mildred Averill’s meaning that I had no time to analyze the way I was taking it. Weighing her words, her impulses, her impatiences, I saw no more than that she might be offering her treasures at the feet of a wooden man, a carved and painted figment, without history or soul. That is, unless I mistook her meanings as Malvolio mistook Viola’s!