yffert stayed
in the hotel to send off postcards to her friends, a duty she had
neglected for some days. The evening was warm and still and the moon
was approaching its full and very bright. Insensibly the soft afterglow
passed into moonlight.

At first the two companions talked very little. Sir Richmond was well
content with this tacit friendliness and Miss Grammont was preoccupied
because she was very strongly moved to tell him things about herself
that hitherto she had told to no one. It was not merely that she wanted
to tell him these things but also that for reasons she did not put as
yet very clearly to herself she thought they were things he ought to
know. She talked of herself at first in general terms. "Life comes on
anyone with a rush, childhood seems lasting for ever and then suddenly
one tears into life," she said. It was even more so for women than it
was for men. You are shown life, a crowded vast spectacle full of what
seems to be intensely interesting activities and endless delightful and
frightful and tragic possibilities, and you have hardly had time to
look at it before you are called upon to make decisions. And there is
something in your blood that urges you to decisive acts. Your mind,
your reason resists. "Give me time," it says. "They clamour at you with
treats, crowds, shows, theatres, all sorts of things; lovers buzz at
you, each trying to fix you part of his life when you are trying to get
clear to live a little of your own." Her father had had one merit at any
rate. He had been jealous of her lovers and very ready to interfere.

"I wanted a lover to love," she said. "Every girl of course wants that.
I wanted to be tremendously excited.... And at the same time I dreaded
the enormous interference....

"I wasn't temperamentally a cold girl. Men interested and excited me,
but there were a lot of men about and they clashed with each other.
Perhaps way down in some out of the way place I should have fallen in
love quite easily with the one man who came along. But no man fixed his
image. After a year or so I think I began to lose the power which is
natural to a young girl of falling very easily into love. I became
critical of the youths and men who were attracted to me and I became
analytical about myself....

"I suppose it is because you and I are going to part so soon that I can
speak so freely to you.... But there are things about myself that I have
never had out even with myself. I can talk t