Cathleen received him in her little bed-sitting-room at the top of the big grim house, which smelled of food, ink, and washing. She had made her den very pretty, and he recognized a picture he had given her long ago, and one or two trinkets that her mother had had in her boudoir in Scotland. The walls were of plain brown paper, and there were gay-colored stuffs by the windows and on the sofa. She took in his spruceness at a glance, was pleased by it, and laughed. "I must give you a buttonhole," she said, "as I used to do. You look so wonderfully the same." René trembled as she came to him and pinned a flower in his coat. "Sit down," she said. "I think we can talk better here." René sat awkwardly on the sofa, she by the fire, which she stirred with the poker. "Well," she said, "I feel rather a beast. I couldn't help flirting with you a little yesterday. That's got to stop." "Were you--flirting?" "I was." "I thought you were glad to see me--as glad as I was to see you." "I was glad. I'd been having a foolishly miserable time. Living in this house is rather terrible with nothing but women, unmarried women. You don't know. They come here young, many of them from the country. Then they go out to work in the day and come in in the evening. They haven't enough money to pay for amusements. They're too respectable to look for fun in the streets. They hardly dare have a man-friend, the others are so jealous, so rigid, so uncomprehending." René said: "I had a feeling that my presence here was an offense." Cathleen laughed: "That's why I asked you. I thought it would do them good to see you. It did me so much good. I think I was getting infected by it. Lotta, my friend, escapes into the country now and then. She has a cottage. I go too sometimes, but her consolations are not mine. She has a garden and makes jams and fruit-wines. I want something more than that. I don't want to console myself until I have to. If I were going to do that I might just as well have stayed with my mother. On the other hand, I don't want to flirt with you, my friend. It wouldn't be fair to you." "What do you want, then?" "I want to be able to assume that we love each other. We can be frank then. It sounds uncomfortably intellectual, I know, but that will be less disastrous than being uncomfortably emotional. You used to think about these things. You made me think. You haven't stopped?" "No. No. But I have such a longing for simplicity. I don't know why there is all this fuss made about love." "Because people will exploit the first excitement of it. Blake said: He who catches a joy as it flies Lives in eternity's sunrise." "I don't know about that," said René. "All I know is that I don't want to let you go." "But you may have to. We had a wonderful thing yesterday. We may not be able to rise to it again." "I don't care about that. I want _you_." "Only because we had that moment yesterday." "I don't know why it is."