erybody in it being kissed, Mrs. Fisher as copiously as she herself
and Rose.

"You don't like us being in here," said Mrs. Wilkins, getting up
and at once, after her manner, fixing on the truth. "Why?"

"I should have thought," said Mrs. Fisher leaning on her stick,
"you could have seen that it is my room."

"You mean because of the photographs," said Mrs. Wilkins.

Mrs. Arbuthnot, who was a little red and surprised, got up too.

"And the notepaper," said Mrs. Fisher. "Notepaper with my London
address on it. That pen--"

She pointed. It was still in Mrs. Wilkins's hand.

"Is yours. I'm very sorry," said Mrs. Wilkins, laying it on the
table. And she added smiling, that it had just been writing some very
amiable things.

"But why," asked Mrs. Arbuthnot, who found herself unable to
acquiesce in Mrs. Fisher's arrangements without at least a gentle
struggle, "ought we not to be here? It's a sitting-room."

"There is another one," said Mrs. Fisher. "You and your friend
cannot sit in two rooms at once, and if I have no wish to disturb you
in yours I am unable to see why you should wish to disturb me in mine."

"But why--" began Mrs. Arbuthnot again.

"It's quite natural," Mrs. Wilkins interrupted, for Rose was
looking stubborn; and turning to Mrs. Fisher she said that although
sharing things with friends was pleasant she could understand that Mrs.
Fisher, still steeped in the Prince of Wales Terrace attitude to life,
did not yet want to, but that she would get rid of that after a bit and
feel quite different. "Soon you'll want us to share," said Mrs.
Wilkins reassuringly. "Why, you may even get so far as asking me to
use your pen if you knew I hadn't got one."

Mrs. Fisher was moved almost beyond control by this speech. To
have a ramshackle young woman from Hampstead patting her on the back as
it were, in breezy certitude that quite soon she would improve, stirred
her more deeply than anything had stirred her since her first discovery
that Mr. Fisher was not what he seemed. Mrs. Wilkins must certainly be
curbed. But how? There was a curious imperviousness about her. At
that moment, for instance, she was smiling as pleasantly and with as
unclouded a face as if she were saying nothing in the least
impertinent. Would she know she was being curbed? If she didn't know,
if she were too tough to feel it, then what? Nothing, except
avoidance; except, precisely, one's own private sitting-room.

"I'm an