Alma tried to answer Mrs. Pinner's loud fresh talking in the way things had been answered earlier in the afternoon before the departure of all the other people. Everything she said was an attempt to beat things up. Every time she spoke Miriam was conscious of something in the room that would be there with them all if only Alma would leave off being funny; something there was in life that Alma had never yet known, something that belonged to an atmosphere she would call "dull." Mr. Wilson knew that something ... had it in him somewhere, but feared it and kept it out by trying to be bigger, by trying to be the biggest thing there was. Alma went on and on, sometimes uncomfortably failing, her thin voice sounding out like a corkscrew in a cork without any bottle behind it, now and again provoking a response which made things worse because it brought to the table the shamed sense of trying to keep something going.... The clever excitements would not come back. Mrs. Binkley would have helped her.... Miriam sat helpless and miserable between her admiration of Alma's efforts and her longing for the thing Alma kept out. Her discomfiture at Alma's resentment of her dulness and Alma's longing for Mrs. Binkley was made endurable by her anger over Alma's obstructiveness. Mr. Pinner and the big man were busily feeding. Mrs. Pinner laughed and now and again tried to imitate Alma; as if she had learned how it was done by many visits to the Wilsons', and then forgot and talked in her own way, forgetting to try to say good things. Alma grew smaller as supper went on and Mr. and Mrs. Pinner larger and larger. Together they were too strong in their sense of some other life and some other way of looking at things to give the Wilson way a clear field. Mr. Wilson began monologues in favourable intervals, but they tailed off for lack of nourishing response. Miriam listened eagerly and suspiciously; lost in admiration and a silent, mentally wordless opposition. She felt the big man was on her side and that the Pinners would be if they could understand. They only saw the jokes ... the--the, higher facetiousness ... good phrase, that was the Chianti. And they were getting used to that; perhaps they were secretly a little tired of it. 8