There is always a fraction of a second when you know what you are doing. Miss Szigmondy would have gone on talking about bicycling until Mr. Hancock came back. There was no need to say suddenly, without thinking about it "I am dying to learn." _Really_ that sudden remark was the result of having failed to speak when they were all talking about Mr. Wilson. If, then, one had suddenly said "I am dying to learn bicycling" or _anything_ they would have known something of the truth about Mr. Wilson. It was the worrying thought of him, still there, that made one say, without thinking, "I am dying to learn." It was too late. It linked up with the silence about Mr. Wilson and left one being a person who knew and altogether approved of Mr. Wilson and wanted to learn bicycling. Altogether wrong. "You know--I don't approve of Mr. Wilson; and you might not if you heard him talk, and ... his marriage ... you know...." ... If I had done that, I should have been easy and strong and could have 'made conversation' when she began talking about bicycling. I was like the man who proposed to the girl at the dance because he could not think of anything to say to her. He could not think of anything to say because he had something on his mind.... And Miss Szigmondy would not have called this morning. * * * * * "_No_ one can pgonounce my name. You had better call me Thégèse my dear girl. Yes, do; I want you to." She had said that with a worried face, a sudden manner of unsmiling intimacy. She certainly had some plan. Standing there with her broken hearted voice and her anxious face she seemed to be separate from the room, even from her own clothes. Yet something within her was moving so quickly that it made one breathless. She was so intent that she was unconscious of the appealing little figure she made huddled in her English clothes. She stood dressed and determined and prosperous her smart little toque held closely against her dark hair and sallow face with the kind of chenille-spotted veil that was a rampart against _everything_ in the world to an Englishwoman. But it did not touch her or do anything for her. It gave an effect of prison bars behind which she was hanging her head and weeping and appealing. One could have laughed and gathered her up. Why was she forlorn? Why did she imagine that one was also forlorn? The sight of her made all the forlornness one had ever seen or read about seem peopled with knowledge and sympathy and warm thoughts that flew crowding along one's brain as close and bright as the texture of everybody's everyday. But the eyes were anxious and preoccupied, blinking now and then in her long unswerving appealing gaze, shutting swiftly for lightning calculations between her rapid appealing statements. What was she trying to do? * * * * *