“It was _such_ a bore stretching the webbing,” said Miriam critically, avoiding Sybil’s eager eyes. “It _must_ have been--but how awfully jolly to have billiards. I simply adaw billiards,” said Joey fervently. “Such a fearful business getting them absolutely taut,” pursued Miriam, feeling how much the cream caramel was enhanced by the sight of the length, beyond the length of the dining-room, of that bright long heavy room. She imagined it lit and people walking about amongst the curious lights and shadows with cues--and cigarettes; quiet intent faces. Englishmen. Did the English invent billiards? “Poor old Joey. Wish you weren’t going to the dentist. You won’t be here when Mélie comes.” “Don’t mind the dentist a scrap. I’m looking forward to it. I shall see Mélie to-night.” She doesn’t like her, thought Miriam; people being together is awful; like the creaking of furniture. 2 Mélie arrived an hour before dinner time. Miriam heard Mrs. Corrie taking her into the room next to her own with laughter and many phrases. A panting, determined voice, like a voice out of a play, the thick, smooth, rather common voice of a fair-haired middle-aged lady in a play kept saying, “The pores, my dear. I must open my pores after the journey. I’m _choked_ with it.” Presently Mélie’s door closed and Mrs. Corrie tapped and put her head inside Miriam’s door. “She’s goin’ to have a steam bath on her floor, got an injarubber tent on the floor and a spirit lamp. She’s gettin’ inside it. Isn’t she an old _cure_!” “She’s thinking more about her food than anything they’re saying; she doesn’t really care about them a bit,” thought Miriam at dinner, gazing again and again across at Mrs. Staple-Craven’s fat little shape seated opposite herself in a tightly fitting pale blue silk dress whose sleeves had tiny puffs instead of the fashionable large square sleeves. Watching her cross unconscious face, round and blue-eyed and all pure “milk and roses,” her large yellow head with a tiny twist of hair standing up like the handle of a jug, exactly on the top of the crown, her fat white hands with thick soft curly fingers and bright pink nails, the strange blue stare that went from thing to thing on the table, hearing her thick smooth heedless voice, with its irrelevant assertions and statements, Miriam wondered how she had come to be Mrs. Staple-Craven. She was no more Mrs. Staple-Craven than she was sitting at Mrs. Corrie’s table. She was not really there. She was just getting through, and neither Mrs. Corrie nor Joey really knew this. At the same time she was too stout and gluttonous to be still really a fairy in Devonshire. Where was she? What did she think? She went on and on because she was afraid someone might ask her that.