"Why do you say their wives were all like cats?" "They were." She called up the unhatted figures moving about among the guests in trailing gowns,--keeping something up, pretending to be interested, being cattishly nice to the visitors, and thinking about other things all the time.... I can't _stand_ them, oh, I can't stand them.... But the girls would not have seen them in that way; they would have been interested in them and their dresses, they would have admired the prettiness of some of them and found several of them 'charming' ... if Mag were an artist's wife she would behave in the way those women behaved.... "Were they all _alike_?" that was half sarcastic.... "Absolutely. They were all _cats_, simply." "Isn't she _extraordinary_?" "It's the cats who are extraordinary. Why do they do it girls! _Why_ do they do it?" She flushed feeling insincere. At this moment she felt that she knew that Mag in social life, would conform and be a cat. She had never thought of her in social life; here in poverty and freedom she was herself. "Do _phwatt_ me dear?" "Oh let them go. It makes me tired, even to think of them. The thought of the sound of their voices absolutely wears me out." "I'm not laaazy--I'm tie-erd--I was _born_ tie-erd." "I say girls, I want to ask you something." "Well?" "Why don't you two write?" "_Write?_" "Write what?" "Us?" "Just as we are, without one"-- "Flea--I know. No. _Don't_ be silly. I'm perfectly serious. I mean it. Why don't you write things--both of you. I thought of it this morning." Both girls sat thoughtful. It was evident that the idea was not altogether unfamiliar to them. "Someone kept telling me the other day I ought to write and it suddenly struck me that if anyone ought it's you two. Why don't you Mag?" "Why should I? Have I not already enough on my fair young shoulders?" "_Jan_, why don't _you_?" "I, my dear? For a most excellent reason." "What reason?" demanded Miriam in a shaking voice. Her heart was beating; she felt that a personal decision was going to be affected by Jan's reason, if she could be got to express it. Jan did not reply instantly and she found herself hoping that nothing more would be said about writing, that she might be free to go on cherishing the idea, alone and unbiassed. "I do not write" said Jan slowly, "because I am perfectly convinced that anything I might write would be mediocre."