Miriam sat thinking. She imagined the two, the snatched caress, the other man alone and unconscious. "Would you call that treachery to the other person?" "It would depend upon which she liked best." "That's just the difficulty." "_Oh._ That's awful." "Don't you think a kiss, just a kiss--might be,--well--neither here nor there." "Well, if it's nothing, there's nothing in the whole thing. If there _is_ anything--you can't talk about just kisses." "Dreadful Miriam." "Do you believe in blunted sensibilities?" How funny that Mag should have led up to that new phrase ... but this was a case. "You mean----" "Whether if a sensibility is blunted it can ever grow sharp again." "No. I suppose that's it. How can it?" "I don't know. I'm not sure. It's a perfectly awful idea, I think." "It is awful--because we are all blunting our sensibilities all the time--are we not?" "That's just it--whether we ought." "Does one always know?" "Don't you think so? There's a feeling. Yes I think one always knows." "Suppe, children." Miriam took her bowl with eager embarrassment ... the sugar-basin, the pudding basin and the slop bowl together on a tray, the quickly produced soup--the wonderful rich life the girls lived in their glowing rooms--each room with a different glow.... Jan's narrow green clean room with its suite and hair brushes and cosmetics and pictures of Christ, Mag's crowded shadowy little square, its litter and its many photographs, their eiderdowns and baths and hot water bottles; the kitchen alive with eyes and foreheads--musicians, artists philosophers pasted on the walls ... why? Why?... Jan with wonderful easy knowledge of the world's great people ... and strange curious intimate liking for them ... the sad separate effect of all those engraved faces ... the perfectly beautiful blur they made all together in patches on the walls ... the sitting room, Mag, nearly all Mag, except the photographs on the mantelpiece ... the whole rooms from the top of the stairs ... her thoughts folded down; they were not going away; not; that was certain. "I say I can't go on for ever eating your soup." "_Drink_ it then for a change my child." "No but really." "This is special soup; there is a charge; one guinea a basin." "Use of room two guineas." "Intellectual conversation----" "One and eleven three." Miriam flung out delighted admiring glances and laughed unrestrainedly. Mag's look saying "it does not take much to keep the child amused" took nothing from her mirthful joy. Their wit, or was it humour?--always brought the same happy shock ... they were so funny; there was a secret in it. "It's awfully good soup." "Desiccated----" "A penny a packet." "Thickened with pea flour." "Twopence a packet." 6 "Was she your favourite schoolfellow?"