Upstairs she found herself eagerly tearing open the letter.... "I've just heard from an old schoolfellow" she heard herself saying to the girls in Kennett Street. There was something exciting in the letter ... at the end Alma Wilson (officially Mrs. G. Wilson) ... strange people in the room ... Alma amongst them; looking out from amongst dreadfulness. _Married._ She had gone in amongst the crowd already--forever. How clever of her ... deceitful ... that little spark of Alma in her must have been deceitful ... sly, at some moment. Alma's eyes glanced at her with a new more preoccupied and covered look ... she used to go sometimes to theatres with large parties of people with money and the usual dresses who never thought anything about anything ... perhaps that was part of the reason, perhaps Alma was more that than she had thought ... marrying in the sort of way she went to theatre-parties--clever. The letter was full of excitement ... Alma leaping up from her marriage and clutching at her ... not really married; dancing to some tune in some usual way like all those women and jumping up in a way that fizzled and could not be kept up.... "You dear old thing! ... fell out of the sky this morning ... to fill pages with 'you dear old thing!' ... see you at _once_! _Immediately!_ ... come up to town and meet you ... some sequestered tea-shop ... our ancient heads together ... tell you all that has happened to me since those days ... next Thursday ... let you know how really really rejoiced I am ... break the very elderly fact that I am married ... but that makes no difference...." That would not be so bad--seeing Alma alone in a tea shop in the west end; in a part of the new life, that would be all right; nothing need happen, nothing would be touched, "all I have had the temerity to do ..." what did that mean? 4