"Rushing round and round meeting me and then overtaking me, startling me out of my wits by ringing behind for me to get to the side. Nobody else did that. It was awfully kind. I went tacking about from side to side." "I'm afraid you've had a very drastic time. I think you'd better come up this evening and learn getting on and off on the lawn; that's the way to do it." "Oh" said Miriam gratefully; "but I have no machine. Mrs. Orly lent me hers." "I daresay we can hire a machine." CHAPTER XIII 1 Miriam found it difficult to believe that the girl was a dental secretary. She swept about among Miss Szigmondy's guests in a long Liberty dress, her hands holding her long scarf about her person as if she were waiting for a clear space to leap or run, staying nowhere, talking here and there with the assurance of a successful society woman, laughing and jesting, swiftly talking down the group she was with and passing on with a shouted remark about herself as she had done in the library on the night of Lord Kelvin's lecture.... "I'm tired of being good; I'm going to try being naughty for a change." Mr. Hancock had stood planted before her in laughing admiration, waiting for the next thing that she might say. How could he of all men in the world be taken out of himself by an effective trick? He had laughed more spontaneously than Miriam had ever seen him do. What _was_ this effective thing? An appearance of animation. That it seemed, could make any man, even Mr. Hancock, if it were free from any suggestion of loudness or vulgarity, stand gaping and disarmed. Why had he volunteered the information that she was eighteen and secretary to his friend in Harley Street. "You don't seem very _keen_"; that was her voice from the other end of the room; using the new smart word with a delicate emphasis, pretending interest in something, meaning nothing at all. She was a middle-aged woman, she would never be older than she was now. She saw nothing and no one, nor ever would. In all her life she would never be arrested by anything. Nice kind people would call her "a charming girl." ... "Charming girls" were taught to behave effectively and lived in a brilliant death, dealing death all round them. Nothing could live in their presence. No natural beauty, no spectacle of art, no thought, no music. They were uneasy in the presence of these things, because their presence meant cessation of "charming" behaviour--except at such moments as they could use the occasion to decorate themselves. _They had no souls._ Yet in social life nothing seemed to possess any power but their surface animation.