Miss Fleet was smiling. "But I'm not a pessimist as regards marriage," she added. "And I think men are quite as good as women, and quite as bad." "How calm you are!" "Why not?" "I could never be like that." "Perhaps when you are fifty." "Not if I'm unmarried!" said Charmian, with a bluntness, a lack of caution very rare in her. "I don't think you will be, unless you go on before you are fifty." Charmian gazed at Miss Fleet, and was conscious that she herself was entirely concentrated on the present life; she was a good girl, she had principles, even sometimes desires not free from nobility. She believed in a religion--the Protestant religion it happened to be. And yet--yes, certainly--she was absolutely concentrated on the present life. She even felt as if it were somehow physically impossible for her to be anything else. To "go on" before she was fifty! What a horror in that idea! To "go on" at all, ever--how strange, how dreadful! She was silent for some minutes, with her pretty head against the back of a chair. An Arab dragoman went by among the trees. The strangled yelp of a motor-car rose out of a cloud of white dust at the bottom of the garden. The faint cry of a siren came up from the distant sea where _The Wanderer_ lay at rest. And suddenly Charmian thought, "When am I going to be here again?" "Do you ever feel you have lived before in some place when you visit it for the first time?" she said, moving her head from the back of her chair. "I did once." "Do you ever feel you will live in a place that's new to you, that you have no connection with, and that you have only come to for a day or two?" "I can't say I do." "I suppose we all have lots of absurd fancies." "I don't think I do," responded Miss Fleet, quite without arrogance. "I--I wish you'd tell me where you got that coat and skirt," said Charmian. "I will. I got it at Folkestone. I'll give you the address when we go on board again. My mother lives at Folkestone. She is a companion to a dear old Mrs. Simpkins, so I go down there whenever I have time." One's mother companion to a dear old Mrs. Simpkins! How extraordinary! And why did it make Charmian feel as if she were almost fond of Susan Fleet? "And I get really well-cut things for a very small price there, so I'm lucky." "I think you are lucky in another way," hazarded Charmian. "Yes?" "To be as you are." After that day in the garden Charmian knew that she was going to be fond of Susan Fleet. Mrs. Shiffney, of course, did not return on the following afternoon. "I daresay she'll be away for a week," Susan said. "If you feel better we might go and see the town and visit some of the villas. There are several that are beautiful."