"Yet I sometimes feel as though I have been married several times," she said. The words suggested a shocking fertility of imagination. "My dear, what do you mean?" Theresa laughed. "Just that. One knows so much one hasn't actually experienced." "I hope not!" "But I can't help it," she urged. "It's how I happen to be made." Mrs. Morton moved uneasily. "I'm afraid I don't know what you mean. I suppose I am very old-fashioned." She was disappointed at the very moment when she thought she was beginning to understand her son's love for this pale, quick girl with the watchful eyes, whose glances half-alarmed her. She was glad when the door was opened. "Ah, here's Basil." Theresa turned to him. "Basil," she said, "have you ever been in a balloon?" "No." "But you can imagine what it's like, can't you?" "Yes, I think so." "Of course you can." She was eager, persuasive. "You would have a feeling of having no inside, wouldn't you, and no feet? And you would feel like a little speck of dust, and because you were so small, it wouldn't seem to matter if you fell out into that enormous empty space? Would it?" He humoured her, smiling as he took in the radiance of her hair, the slimness of the green-clad body, the thin feet in their bronze-coloured shoes. "Very likely," he said. "You see!" she exclaimed, laughing. "Basil knows all about something he hasn't experienced. Why shouldn't I?" Her lips changed their curve. "Is it because I am a woman?" Her little taunt was for him: she had forgotten his mother, on whose face there were small evidences of distress. "What is it now, dear?" he murmured, and led her to the window. "Come and look at the trees against the sky." She went meekly, for the sake of the hand holding her; but she was shaken by inward laughter. Like a child she was being drawn out of mischief and enticed to look out of the window at the pretty sky. And later, when the guests had arrived, when Mr. and Mrs. Waring talked to her kindly and ponderously, and the three Misses Waring in the glow of their healthy young beauty asked who was her favourite author and if she liked the country, she knew that Mrs. Morton watched her nervously. She was annoyed by that suspicion of her manners, but stronger than her annoyance was her determination to please, not, like Mrs. Morton, for her lover's sake, but for her own. Her one sure talent cried loudly to be used, and as she listened to it, she felt a stir of physical pleasure in her breast. She, who had drawn the truth from unwilling lips, and brought back long-forgotten laughter, had no doubt of making what effect she chose on these amiable strangers.