There was more than a hint of invitation in this.  After a silence, she said:  “One’s instinct is to hide one’s troubles.”

“Sylvia,” I answered, “let me tell you about us.  You must realise that you’ve been a wonderful person to me; you belong to a world I never had anything to do with, and never expected to get a glimpse of.  It’s the wickedness of our class-civilization that human beings can’t be just human beings to each other—­a king can hardly have a friend.  Even after I’ve overcome the impulse I have to be awed by your luxury and your grandness; I’m conscious of the fact that everybody else is awed by them.  If I so much as mention that I’ve met you, I see people start and stare at me—­instantly I become a personage.  It makes me angry, because I want to know you.”

She was gazing at me, not saying a word.  I went on:  “I’d never have thought it possible for anyone to be in your position and be real and straight and human, but I realise that you have managed to work that miracle.  So I want to love you and help you, in every way I know how.  But you must understand, I can’t ask for your confidence, as I could for any other woman’s.  There is too much vulgar curiosity about the rich and great, and I can’t pretend to be unaware of that hatefulness; I can’t help shrinking from it.  So all I can say is—­if you need me, if you ever need a real friend, why, here I am; you may be sure I understand, and won’t tell your secrets to anyone else.”

With a little mist of tears in her eyes, Sylvia put out her hand and touched mine.  And so we went into a chamber alone together, and shut the cold and suspicious world outside.

20.  We knew each other well enough now to discuss the topic which has been the favourite of women since we sat in the doorways of caves and pounded wild grain in stone mortars—­the question of our lords, who had gone hunting, and who might be pleased to beat us on their return.  I learned all that Sylvia had been taught on the subject of the male animal; I opened that amazing unwritten volume of woman traditions, the maxims of Lady Dee Lysle.

Sylvia’s maternal great-aunt had been a great lady out of a great age, and incidentally a grim and grizzled veteran of the sex-war.  Her philosophy started from a recognition of the physical and economic inferiority of woman, as complete as any window-smashing suffragette could have formulated, but her remedy for it was a purely individualist one, the leisure-class woman’s skill in trading upon her sex.  Lady Dee did not use that word, of course—­she would as soon have talked of her esophagus.  Her formula was “charm,” and she had taught Sylvia that the preservation of “charm” was the end of woman’s existence, the thing by which she remained a lady, and without which she was more contemptible than the beasts.