"You shall! You shall! _Dear_ old Mira." She was laughing again. "But you'll come out and have tea. Sometimes. Won't you, for instance, come out and have tea _now_? In a few minutes? There'll be tea; in _ever_ such a few minutes. Wouldn't that be a bright idea?" How dainty she was; how pretty. A Dresden china shepherdess, without the simper; a sturdiness behind her sparkling mirth. If only she would stop trying to liven her up. It seemed always when they were alone, as if she were still brightly in the midst of people keeping things going.... "Tea! Bright idea! Tea!" A little parting shake and a brisk whirling turn and she was sitting away on the side of the bed, meditatively, with both hands, using a small filmy handkerchief, having given up hope of galvanising; saying gravely, "Take off your things and tell me really how you are." "I'm at my last gasp," said Miriam sinking into a chair. It was clear now that she would not be alone with the first expressiveness of the room. Returning later on she would find it changed. The first, already fading, wonderful moment would return, painfully, only when she was packing up to go. After all it was Alma's home. But it was no use trying to fight this monstrous conviction that the things she liked of other people, were more hers than their own. The door opened again upon a servant with her pilgrim baskets. "I nearly always _am_ at my last gasp nowadays." Clean, strong neatly cuffed hands setting the dusty London baskets down to rest in the quiet freshness. Alma spoke formally; her voice a comment on expressiveness in the presence of the maid; and an obliteration of the expressiveness of the room; making it just a square enclosure set about with independent things, each telling, one against the other, a separate history.... When the maid was gone the air was parched with silence. Miriam felt suspended; impatient; eager to be out in whatever grouping Alma had come from, to recover there in the open the sense of life that had departed from the sheltering room. "How is Sarah?" Alma felt the strain. But for her it was the difficulty of finding common ground for interchange with anyone whose life was lacking in brilliant features. She was behaving, kindly trying for topics; but also, partly, underlining the featurelessness, as a punishment for bad behaviour. "Oh--flourishing--I think." She rose, unpinning her stifling veil. She would have to brace herself to reach out to something with which to break into the questions Alma's kind patience would one by one produce. A catechism leading her thoughts down into a wilderness of unexamined detail that would unfit her for the coming emergence. "And Harriett?" "Harriett's simply _splendid_. You know, if she only had a little capital she could take another house. She's sending people away all the time."