an's purity and modesty---- But what's the use of
saying that to you? Of course you're right. Who wants to stay at home
with a lot of little brats, if you can have a dozen men a week standing
you dinners, and mauling you like a bargee, and'----

'Elise!'

'There's the water getting near the boil.' Elise rose with a strange
little laugh and looked at a yellow silk stocking which dangled over the
side of a wicker table. As if trying to solve a conundrum, she glanced
from it to the shapely form of the young woman at her toilet. 'When the
war's over,' she said ruminatingly, 'and our men find what kind of girls
they married when they were on leave'----

'There you go again. For Heaven's sake, Elise, if you can't attract men
yourself, don't nag a girl who does. You're positively sexless. The way
you talk'----

'There's the water. When Horace comes I don't want to see him.'

'I guess he can live without it,' said the patriotic, leave-wangling
war-worker, with an angry glance at Elise as she disappeared into the
kitchen. Catching a glimpse of the frown in the mirror, she checked it,
and once more leaned towards the reflection as if she would kiss the
alluring lips that beckoned coaxingly in the glass.

II.

Marian had gone, radiant, and exulting in her radiance; and Elise sat by
the meagre fire trying to take interest in a novel. Although she had
found it easy to be confident and self-assertive when the other girl was
there, the solitariness of the flat and the silence of the street
undermined her courage. The dragging minutes, the meaningless
pages. . . . She wished that even Marian were there in all her
complacent vulgarity.

Although she had drawn many people to her, the passing of the years had
left Elise practically friendless. It was easy for her to attract with
her gift of intense personality; but the very quality that attracted was
the one that eventually repelled. The impossibility of forgetting
herself, of losing herself in the intimacies of friendship, made her own
personality a thing which was stifling her life. Since she was a child
she had craved for understanding and sympathy, but nature and her
upbringing had made it impossible for her to accept them when they were
offered. Lacking the power of self-expression, and consequently
self-forgetfulness, her own individuality oppressed her. It was like an
iron mask which she could not remove, and which no one could penetrate.

Going to L