"You knew Susan at school." The brown, tweed-covered arm of the little square figure handed a tea-cup. The high huskily hooting voice ... what was the overwhelming impression? A common voice, with a cockney twang. Overwhelming. "What was Susan like at school?" The voice was saying two things; that was it; doing something deliberately; it was shy and determined and deliberate and expectant. Miriam glanced incredulously, summoning all her forces against her sense of strange direct attack, pushing through and out to some unknown place, dreading her first words, not taking in a further remark of the live voice. She could get up and go away for ever; or speak and whatever she spoke would keep her there for ever. Alma, sitting behind the tea-tray in a green Alma dress with small muslin cuffs and collars had betrayed her into this. Alma had been got by this and had brought her to the test of it. The brown walls, brown paper all over, like parcel paper and Japanese prints; nothing else, high-backed curious shaped wooden chairs all with gestures, like the candlestick, and the voice that was in the same difficult, different world as the books upstairs.... Alma had betrayed her, talking as if they were like other people and not saying anything about this strange cold difference. Alma had come to it and was playing some part she had taken up ... there was some wrong hurried rush somewhere within the beautiful room. Stop, she wanted to say, you're all wrong. You've dropped something you don't know anything about deliberately. Alma ought to have told you. Hasn't she told you? "Alma hasn't changed" she said, desperately questioning the smooth soft movements of the smooth soft hands, the quiet controlled pose of the head. Alma had the same birdlike wide blink and flash of her limpid brown eyes, the same tight crinkle and snicker when she laughed, the same way of saying nothing or only the clever superficially true things men said. Alma had agreed with this man and had told him nothing or only things in the clever way he would admire. He made little sounds into his handkerchief. He was nonplussed at a dull answer. It would be necessary to be brilliant and amusing to hold his attention--in fact to tell lies. To get on here one would have to say clever things in a high bright voice.