"I have never found it difficult," he remarked. "Well, you've had a good many years to get used to it," she reminded him. His hand rested for a moment upon her shoulder. He drew her a little towards him. She suddenly laughed, leaned over and kissed him on both cheeks, and jumped up. The trim little parlourmaid was at the door with tea. "Yes," she went on, "you have learned to read my handwriting, and I have learned how you like your tea. Just one or two more little things like that, and life is made between two people, isn't it? Shall I tell you what I think the most singular thing in the world?" she went on, pausing for a moment in her task. "It is fidelity to purpose--and to people, too, perhaps. In a way there is a quaint sort of distinction about it, and from another point of view it is most horribly constraining." "I interrupted you this afternoon, I imagine," he observed, "in the construction of some work of fiction." "Oh, no!" she replied. "What I write isn't fiction. That's why it sells. It's truth, you see, under another garb. But there the fact remains--that I shouldn't know how to make tea for another man in the world, and you wouldn't be able to read the letters of any other woman who wrote as badly as I do." "The fact," he remarked, "seems to me to be a cause for mutual congratulation." She stooped down to place a dish of muffins on a heater near the fire, graceful yet as a girl, and as brisk. "I can't imagine," she declared, "why it is that my sex has acquired the reputation for fidelity. I am sure we crave for experience much more than men." The Marquis helped himself to a muffin and considered the point. There were many times when Marcia's conversation troubled him. He was by no means an ill-read or unintellectual man, only his studies of literature had been confined to its polished and classical side, the side which deals so much with living and so little with life. "Are you preparing for a new work of fiction, Marcia," he asked, "or are you developing a fresh standpoint?" "Dear friend," she declared, lightly and yet with an undernote of earnestness, "how can I tell? I never know what I am going to do in the way of work. I wish I could say the same about life. Now I am going to ask you a great favour. I have to attend a small meeting at my club, at the other end of Piccadilly, at half-past five. Would you take me there?" "I shall be delighted," he answered, a little stiffly. She went presently to put on her outdoor clothes. The Marquis was disappointed. He realised how much he had looked forward to that quiet twilight hour, when somehow or other his vanity felt soothed, and that queer weariness which came over him sometimes was banished. He escorted Marcia to the car when she reappeared, however, without complaint.