“London....” she murmured.  Then, sitting upright, and staring at her twisting fingers: 

“Ishmael!...”

A pause which Ishmael broke by asking, “Well?”

“Nothing.  Only—­I was wondering.  Whether you ... how you’d like London, and whether you wouldn’t find down here, and all of us, very dull when you come back?”

“What rot!  Of course not!  Why should I?” asked Ishmael, already so in London in anticipation that he could not even take an interest in his return to this older world.

“Oh, I don’t know.  I only wondered.  You never wonder about things, do you, Ishmael?”

“I don’t think I ever do anything else.”

“Not in the way I mean.  You wonder about life and all sorts of things like that that I don’t bother about, but not about people, about what you feel for them.  That’s what I mean by wondering.”

“Oh, feeling!...” said Ishmael in a gruff embarrassment; “I dunno.  Yes I do, though.  I don’t think what one feels is so very important—­not the personal part of it, anyway.  There’s such a lot of things in the world, and somehow it seems waste of energy to be always tearing oneself to tatters over one’s personal relationship towards any one other person.”

Phoebe tried to snatch at the words that blew past over her head as far as her comprehension of them was concerned.

“But how can you say it’s not important?” she exclaimed reproachfully.  “Even being married wouldn’t seem important if you looked at it that way.”

“Even being married....” repeated Ishmael.  Inwardly came the swift thought:  “Well, why is there all this fuss about it, anyway?” All he said was: 

“Why, have you been thinking of getting married, Phoebe?”

“A lady can’t be the first to think of it....” said Phoebe.

“I suppose not,” he agreed, true to his own age and that in which he lived.  Conversation lay quiescent between them; he was aware of a sensation of weariness and wished she would go, pretty as she looked sitting there in her circle of swelling skirt and trim little jacket that fitted over her round breast and left bare her soft throat.

“Have you ever ...?” asked Phoebe suddenly.

“Have I ever what?”

“Thought of it ... of getting married?”

“Good Lord! not yet.  There’s been such a lot of other things....”

“Well, when you do I’ll hope you’ll be very happy,” said Phoebe.

“Thanks!  I hope so too.”

“I don’t suppose you’ll know me then.”

“Why ever not?”

“Oh, well, of course you’ll marry a real lady, and she wouldn’t want to know me.  She’d think me common.”

“What utter nonsense, Phoebe!  Do all girls talk such silly nonsense?  Why, of course I’ll always be far too fond of you to lose sight of you, and I expect you and my wife—­how idiotic that sounds—­will be no end of friends.”  He did not think so; but there struck him that there was something rather plaintive and wistful about Phoebe that afternoon.  Suddenly she rose and settled the basque of her jacket with quick, nervous fingers.