“You have an audacity—­” Alicia ended abruptly in a wan smile.

“Haven’t I?  Are you quite sure he wants to marry her?”

“I know it.”

“From him?”

“From him.”

“Oh!”—­Hilda deliberated a moment nursing her slipper—­“Really?  Well, we can’t let that happen.”

“Why not?”

“You have a hardihood!  Is no reason plain to you?  Don’t you see anything?”

Alicia smiled again painfully, as if against a tension of her lips.  “I see only one thing that matters—­he wants it,” she said.

“And won’t be happy till he gets it!  Rubbish, my dear!  We are an intolerably self-sacrificing sex.”  Hilda felt about for pillows, and stretched her length along the bed.  “They’ve taught us well, the men; it’s a blood disease now, running everywhere in the female line.  You may be sure it was a barbarian princess that hesitated between the lady and the tiger.  A civilised one would have introduced the lady and given her a dot, and retired to the nearest convent.  Bah!  It’s a deformity, like the dachshund’s legs.”

Alicia looked as if this would be a little troublesome, and not quite worth while, to follow.

“The happiness of his whole life is involved,” she said simply.

“Oh dear yes—­the old story!  And what about the happiness of yours?  Do you imagine it’s laudable, admirable, this attitude?  Do you see yourself in it with pleasure?  Have you got a sacred satisfaction of self-praise?”

Contempt accumulated in Miss Howe’s voice, and sat in her eyes.  To mark her climax she kicked her slippers over the end of the bed.

“It is idiotic—­it’s disgusting,” she said.

Alicia caught a flash from her.  “My attitude!” she cried.  “What in the world do you mean?  Do you always think in poses?  I take no attitude.  I care for him, and in that proportion I intend that he shall have what he wants—­so far as I can help him to it.  You have never cared for anybody—­what do you know about it?”

Hilda took a calm, unprejudiced view of the ceiling.  “I assure you I’m not an angel,” she cried.  “Haven’t I cared!  Several times.”

“Not really—­not lastingly.”

“I don’t know about really; certainly not lastingly.  I’ve never thought the men should have a monopoly of nomadic susceptibilities.  They entail the prettiest experiences.”

“Of course, in your profession—­”

“Don’t be nasty, sweet lady.  My affections have never taken the opportunities of our profession.  They haven’t even carried me into matrimony, though I remember once, at Sydney, they brought me to the brink!  We must contrive an escape for Duff Lindsay.”

“You assume too much—­a great deal too much.  She must be beautiful—­and good.”

“Give me a figure.  She’s a lily, and she draws the kind of beauty that lilies have from her personal chastity and her religious enthusiasm.  Touch those things and bruise them, as—­as marriage would touch and bruise them—­and she would be a mere fragment of stale vegetation.  You want him to clasp that to his bosom for the rest of his life?”