“I haven’t any idea what you mean,” Lily said, impatiently. “I fail to see that there’s anything for him to ‘take’; and if there were, it would certainly be no affair of his. I have no responsibilities to Mr. Burnett.” “But you did! Weren’t you almost——” “That may be,” Lily interrupted. “But I don’t see him any more.” “You broke with him, Lily?” “I did not, because there was nothing absolutely announced and definite to break. I simply decided not to waste any more of his time and mine.” “Why?” Emma asked. “Because I found that I had no feeling for him; none for him nor for anything else—no interest in him or in any other man alive.” “Oh, Lily!” Emma cried; and then she sat open-mouthed and round-eyed, staring in perfect incredulity. “Oh, _Lily_!” “What’s the matter?” Emma still stared; but finally, being a true friend, she half gasped, “Nothing!” as she rose to go. She was still round of eye, though her mouth had become decorous for a street appearance, when she left the house a few moments later; and Lily was not much better pleased with her friend Emma than she had been with the two taunting girls in the park. Nor were these three the sum of all who displeased her. She went to a “tea,” and easily perceived that she became instantly the centre of all interest;—but she did not like the interest. Whispering and half-suppressed laughter buzzed about her; eyes were furtively upon her wherever she glanced; elderly women looked at her and talked behind their hands; and she was uncomfortably aware of a wondering derision focussing constantly upon her. She came away shivering, marvelling at the pettiness of human nature that could make such a disagreeable pother over a girl’s doing her simple best to atone for a moment’s carelessness with a golf club. Moreover, before she got out of the gate she found herself surrounded by a group of newcomers, girls of her own age, who repeated almost precisely the performance of the two in the park. “How long do you think you can keep his head from fitting together where you broke it, Lily?” This was the last thing she heard from the group near the gate, except for a loud burst of unfriendly laughter. She began to be seriously indignant. XXVIII A PUBLIC MOCKERY NOT MUCH time was granted her indignation to cool;—it became outright fury not twenty-four hours later; and the occasion of this change for the worse was a spectacular little performance on the part of the gentleman for whom her emotions had forever ceased to stir—that unhappy Henry so recently dismissed. And since Henry’s performance took place “in public,” according to Lily’s definition of its background, her fury was multiplied in intensity by a number corresponding to the number of witnesses present at the spectacle.