A very faint dark crimson spread over the face of Miss Annie Brett.  It could not be called a blush, but it was as like a blush as was possible to her.  The phenomenon, as I could see from his eyes, gave Mr Brindley another shock.

‘Yes,’ she replied.  ‘Sally was there as well.’

Then a silence, during which the commercial traveller could be heard reading from the newspaper.

‘When was that?’ gently asked Mr Brindley.

‘Don’t ask me when it was, Mr Brindley,’ she answered nervously.  ‘It’s ever so long ago.  What did he die of?’

‘Don’t know.’

Miss Annie Brett opened her mouth to speak, and did not speak.  There were tears in her reddened eyes.  I felt very awkward, and I think that Mr Brindley also felt awkward.  But I was glad.  Those moist eyes caused me a thrill.  There was after all some humanity in Miss Annie Brett.  Yes, she had after all floated on the bosom of the lake with Simon Fuge.  The least romantic of persons, she had yet felt romance.  If she had touched Simon Fuge, Simon Fuge had touched her.  She had memories.  Once she had lived.  I pictured her younger.  I sought in her face the soft remains of youthfulness.  I invented languishing poses for her in the boat.  My imagination was equal to the task of seeing her as Simon Fuge saw her.  I did so see her.  I recalled Simon Fuge’s excited description of the long night in the boat, and I could reconstitute the night from end to end.  And there the identical creature stood before me, the creature who had set fire to Simon Fuge, one of the ’wonderful creatures’ of the Gazette, ageing, hardened, banal, but momentarily restored to the empire of romance by those unshed, glittering tears.  As an experience it was worth having.

She could not speak, and we did not.  I heard the commercial traveller reading:  ’"The motion was therefore carried by twenty-five votes to nineteen, and the Countess of Chell promised that the whole question of the employment of barmaids should be raised at the next meeting of the B.W.T.S.”  There! what do you think of that?’

Miss Annie Brett moved quickly towards the commercial traveller.

Til tell you what I think of it,’ she said, with ecstatic resentment.  ’I think it’s just shameful!  Why should the Countess of Chell want to rob a lot of respectable young ladies of their living?  I can tell you they’re just as respectable as the Countess of Chell is—­yes, and perhaps more, by all accounts.  I think people do well to call her “Interfering Iris”.  When she’s robbed them of their living, what does she expect them to do?  Is she going to keep them?  Then what does she expect them to do?’