k? This
friendship has been going on----How can I end it suddenly?"

"Don't you be too innocent, Elly. You know and I know perfectly well
what there is between men and women. I don't make out I know--anything I
don't know. I don't pretend you are anything but straight. Only----"

He suddenly gave way to his irritation. His self-control vanished. "Damn
it!" he cried, and his panting breath quickened; "the thing's got to
end. As if I didn't understand! As if I didn't understand!"

She would have protested again but his voice held her. "It's got to end.
It's got to end. Of course you haven't done anything, of course you
don't know anything or think of anything.... Only here I am ill....
_You_ wouldn't be sorry if I got worse.... _You_ can wait; you can....
All right! All right! And there you stand, irritating me--arguing. You
know--it chokes me.... Got to end, I tell you.... Got to end...."

He beat at the arms of his chair and then put a hand to his throat.

"Go away," he cried to her. "Go to hell!"

Sec.4

I cannot tell whether the reader is a person of swift decisions or one
of the newer race of doubters; if he be the latter he will the better
understand how Lady Harman did in the next two days make up her mind
definitely and conclusively to two entirely opposed lines of action. She
decided that her relations with Mr. Brumley, innocent as they were, must
cease in the interests of the hostels and her struggle with Mrs.
Pembrose, and she decided with quite equal certainty that her husband's
sudden veto upon these relations was an intolerable tyranny that must be
resisted with passionate indignation. Also she was surprised to find how
difficult it was now to think of parting from Mr. Brumley. She made her
way to these precarious conclusions and on from whichever it was to the
other through a jungle of conflicting considerations and feelings. When
she thought of Mrs. Pembrose and more particularly of the probable share
of Mrs. Pembrose in her husband's objection to Mr. Brumley her
indignation kindled. She perceived Mrs. Pembrose as a purely evil
personality, as a spirit of espionage, distrust, calculated treachery
and malignant intervention, as all that is evil in rule and officialism,
and a vast wave of responsibility for all those difficult and feeble and
likeable young women who elbowed and giggled and misunderstood and
blundered and tried to live happily under the commanding stresses of
Mrs. Pembrose's austerit