“I think you needn’t mind Ada.  Miss Harden knows that I have to see her sometimes, and that I can’t very well see her in any other way.  And I think you might know it too.”

“Oh, don’t you go thinking I’m jealous.  I know you’re all right.”

“If I’m all right, who’s wrong?”

“Well—­of course I understand what you want with her; but I can’t see what she wants with you.”

“You little fool.  What should she want, except to help me?”

Flossie said nothing to that, for indeed her mind had not formulated any clear charge against Miss Harden.  Keith had annoyed her and she wanted to punish him a little.  She was also curious to see in what manner the chivalry that had deserted her would defend Miss Harden.

He stood still and looked at her with brilliant, angry eyes.

“You don’t understand a great deal, Flossie; but there’s one thing you shall understand—­You are not to say these things about Miss Harden.  Not that you’ll do her any harm, mind, by saying them.  Think for one minute who and what she is, and you’ll see that the only person you are harming is yourself.”

Flossie did think for a minute, and remembered that Lucia was the daughter of a baronet and the cousin of an editor; and she did see that this time she had gone a bit too far.

“And in injuring yourself, you know, you injure me,” he said more gently.  “I don’t know whether that will appeal at all to you.”

It did appeal to her in the sense in which her practical mind understood that injury.

“Do you really think she’ll be able to help you to a good thing?”

He laughed aloud.  “I think she’ll help me to many good things.  She has done that already.

“Oh, well then, I suppose it’s all right.”

Though he said it was all right he knew that it was all wrong; that she was all wrong too.  He wondered again how it was that he had never noticed it before.  It seemed to him now that he must always have seen it, and that he had struggled not to see it, as he was struggling now.

Struggle as he would, he knew that he was only putting off the inevitable surrender.  Putting off the moment that must face him yet, at some turning of the stair or opening of a door, as they went from room to room of the house that, empty, had once seemed to him desirable, and now, littered with the solid irrevocable results of Flossie’s furnishing, inspired him with detestation and despair.  How could he ever live in it?  He and his dream, the dream that Lucia had told him was divorced from reality?  She had told him too that his trouble all lay there, and he remembered that then as now she had advised a reconciliation.  But better a divorce than reconciliation with any of the realities that faced him now.  Better even illusion than these infallible perceptions.  Better to be decently, charitably blind where women are concerned, than to see them so; to see poor Flossie as she was, a reality divorced from any dream.