Louise winced.

"Is Daffy? Mademoiselle? Any of you fools? Oh, it's no use talking! You won't believe me when I tell you that she's a cat. Yes, a p.u.s.s.y-cat, Louise! A silky, purring p.u.s.s.y-cat, pawing you, pat--pat--so softly, like kisses. But if you wriggle--my! Look out for claws! Have a candy?"

Louise gathered herself together. She came close to the bed, and leaning over the older girl, spoke--

"I don't understand what you're driving at--but you're wrong. It's you that's a fool. You misjudge her, utterly. You don't understand her--you're not fit to."

"Are you?" Cynthia laughed at her openly.

"Of course not. No one--Daffy does, of course. But us?--girls? Just because she's been heavenly to you, you take advantage, to watch her, to judge, to twist all she says and does. Why do you hate her so?"

"I don't." Cynthia pulled herself upright. "My dear, you're wrong there.

I like her immensely. She's a real treat. But I don't worship her like you do."

"I don't! I--I just love her." Louise glowed.

Cynthia laughed jollily.

"Oh, well! You'll get over that. Wait till you get a best boy."

"If you think I'd look at any silly man, after knowing her----"

"My dear girl! Has it never occurred to you that you'll marry some day?"

Louise shook her head.

"I've thought it all out. I never could love anybody as much as I do Miss Hartill. I know I couldn't."

"But it's not the same! Falling in love with a man----"

"Love's love," said Louise with finality. "Where's the difference?"

Cynthia sat up.

"Where's the difference? Where's the----?" She giggled. But something in the quality of her laughter disturbed. Louise frowned.

"I didn't say anything funny. You'll love your husband, I suppose, that you're always talking about having--and I'll stick to Miss Hartill. It's perfectly simple."

But Cynthia was still laughing. Louise grew irritable under her amused glances, and would have turned away, but Cynthia flung her arm about her.

"Stop! Don't you really know?"

"What?"

"The difference."

Cynthia's eyes shone oddly. Louise moved uneasily, disconcerted by their expression.

Cynthia continued.

"Hasn't any one told you? Why, with the books you've read----Haven't you read the Bible ever?"

"Of course!" Louise was indignant. "I've been right through--four times."

"And you've never noticed? Good Lord! That's all I read it for."

"I haven't an idea what you're driving at," said Louise. Cynthia was making her thoroughly uncomfortable.

Cynthia was flushed, laughing, pure devilry in her eyes. Her lips were pouted, her little teeth gleamed. She looked a child licking its lips over forbidden dainties. She had pulled Louise into her lap and her voice had dropped to a whisper.

"Shall I tell you? Would you like to know? You ought to--you're fourteen--it's absurd--not knowing about things--shall I tell you?"

Louise fidgeted. Cynthia's manner had aroused her curiosity, but none the less she was repelled. Why, she could not have said. She hesitated, aroused, yet half frightened.

"I'll tell you," said Cynthia lusciously.

With a sudden effort Louise freed herself from the encircling arm. She edged away from the elder girl, stammering a little.

"I don't think I want to know anything. It's awfully sweet of you. I'd rather--I always ask Daffy things. Do you mind?"

Cynthia, good-tempered as ever, laughed aloud.

"Lord, no! But what a little saint! Aren't you ever curious, Louise? All right! I won't tease. Have a candy?"

And Louise, eating chocolates, was not long in forgetting the conversation and all the curious discomfort it had aroused. If a leaf had fallen on the white garment of her innocence--a leaf from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil--she had brushed it aside, all unconscious, before it could leave a stain.

CHAPTER XVI

The spring term was nearly over, holidays and a trip to Italy deliciously near; yet Clare Hartill sat at breakfast and frowned over a neatly-written letter.

Clare Hartill did not encourage the re-entry of old friends into her life. She did not forget them. She would look back upon the far-off flaming intimacy with regret, would quote its pleasures to the friend of the hour with disconcerting enthusiasm; but she was never eager for the reappearance of any whose ways had once diverged from her own. Pleasant memories, if you will; but, in the flesh, old friends were tiresome.

They claimed instant intimacy; were free-tongued, fond, familiar; could not realise that though they might choose to stand still, she, Clare, had grown out of their knowledge, beyond their fellowship. She, indeed, would find them terribly unaltered; older, glamourless, yet amazingly, humiliatingly the same. She would look at them furtively as she entertained them, and shudder at the lapse from taste that surely must have explained her former affection. She would be gracious, kind, yet inimitably distant, and would send them away at last, subdued, vaguely disquieted, loyal still, yet very sure that they would never trouble her again. Which was exactly what Clare Hartill intended. Yet she had her fits of remorse withal, her secret bitter railing at fate and her own nature, for that she could neither keep a friend nor live without one.

Recovering, she would be complacent at having contrived, without loss of prestige, to rid herself of bores.

There was one fly in her ointment. Who knows not that fly, earnest and well-intentioned, which, when it is dug out with a hairpin, cleanses itself exhaustively and forthwith returns to the vaseline jar? Such a fly, optimistic and persistent, was the correspondent who invariably signed herself, "Ever, dear Clare, your affectionate little friend, Olivia Pring. P.S. Do you remember...?" There would follow a reminiscence, at least twenty years old, that Clare never did remember.

Olivia Pring was a school-mate. There had been a term together in the Lower Third. For a few weeks she had been Clare's best friend and she never let Clare forget it. Clare, with removes and double removes, had disappeared speedily from Olivia's world, but she never quite shook off Olivia. Olivia, amiable, admiring, impervious to snubs, refused to be shaken off. She went her placid way, became a governess, and an expert in the more complicated forms of crochet. She wrote to Clare about twice a year--dull, affectionate letters. Clare, that involute character, amazed herself by invariably answering them. At long intervals Olivia would be pa.s.sing through London, and would announce herself, if quite convenient, as intending to visit her dear Clare that afternoon. She would describe the lengthy tussle between herself and her employer, before she had wrested the requisite permission to stay the night--and did Clare remember the last visit but three, and the amusing evening they had had? And the letter was invariably delayed in the posting, and its arrival would precede that of Olivia by a bare half-hour. Olivia, growing even fatter and more placid, would apologise breathlessly between broad smiles at the sight of Clare and recollections of the dear old days. And Clare, as one hypnotised, would go to her linen cupboard and give out sheets for the spare room. There would follow an evening of interminable small-talk for Clare, of sheer delight for Olivia Pring, who, consciously and conscientiously commonplace, enjoyed dear Clare's daring views as a youthful curate might enjoy, strictly as an onlooker, what he imagines to be the less respectable aspects of an evening in Paris.

And Clare would retire to bed at ten-fifteen and sleep as she had not slept for weeks. Olivia would be regretfully obliged to catch the eight-eleven, and would depart amid embraces. And Clare would order up a second breakfast and wonder why she stood it. Yet the pile of unused doileys in her linen cupboard increased yearly. A doiley was Olivia's invariable tribute, and arrived, intricate and unlovely, within a week of her visit.

Clare fingered her letter in quaint helplessness. She had a sleepless night behind her, and a big morning's work before, and her usual end-of-term headache. Olivia was arriving--she glanced at the hopelessly legible sheets--at three-fifty. No chance of mistake there. Clare decided that it was quite impossible for her to survive a seven hours'

_tete-a-tete_ with her affectionate friend Olivia Pring. If only Alwynne could help her out. But Alwynne, she knew, was taking the skimmings of the Sixths and Fifths to a suitable Shakespeare performance. She had taken the pick of the cla.s.ses herself the evening before. No chance of Alwynne, then. And Cynthia! Alack for Cynthia! who could have been trusted to amuse Olivia Pring as much as Olivia Pring would have amused her--Cynthia must be aboard ship by now. Clare, in regretful parenthesis, hoped Cynthia would send a few compatriots to Utterbridge.... Americans gave a fillip to one's duties.... Anyhow Alwynne and Cynthia were out of the question.

There was Louise! She brightened. Louise, queer little thing, was always amusing.... Louise would serve her turn.... Louise would be so charmed to come.... Clare laughed a little consciously. Perhaps she had neglected Louise a trifle of late, perhaps it was not altogether fair of her. A happy thought buffered the p.r.i.c.k of her yawning conscience. It was Alwynne's fault.... Alwynne, with her ridiculous, well-meaning objections.... She, Clare, had given in to them, for peace and quiet sake.... And now, most probably, Louise was not too content with life.... One knew what schoolgirls were.... Never mind! Clare would be very nice to Louise this evening.... Louise should enjoy herself, and, incidentally, preserve Clare from expiring of boredom at poor Olivia's large, flat feet.