the
office at six and come to Martin for rest and comfort. To have
explained his feelings accurately would have been an impossible task
for Martin, but he could not put aside a vague sensation that Freda was
wrongly placed in this world, that she was pre-eminently a martyr and a
rebel, not a woman of leisure.

She did not even know what to say. There is a particular kind of
speech appropriate to these occasions: it is neither flirtation nor
conversation in the proper sense, but a discreet blend, a mixture as
insipid as it is inevitable. It does not demand brains or wit, but a
certain quality, a training. Mary Brodrick, with all her limitations,
knew the game; she was jolly and made things go. Freda hung back or,
when she came forward, made mistakes. Odd that Martin should have been
angry with Freda for her inability to play a game which he himself
despised. Yet it did pain him that she didn't "fit in."

As a strange word whose meaning has recently been discovered seems to
the reader to occur on every page he reads, so Freda suddenly revealed
to Martin in a hundred ways her incapacity for "fitting in." And it
was to the society of countless Brodricks that Martin would have to
take her.

On the Wednesday evening, when the river was rendered invisible by the
press of vessels and fair women, when the supporters of the victorious
college swam across the river and dived from barge and boathouse, when
supper-parties began to disappear up the Cherwell and gramophones to
tinkle in shady recesses, Mary Brodrick caught her train to town, Mr
and Mrs Berrisford went to see the Irish Players, and Martin took Freda
on the river.

To avoid the crowd they were going to the Cherwell above the rollers.
She kept him waiting in the taxi that was to take them to Tims'.

At Tims' she found the punt dirty, said the cushions were filthy, and
would ruin her dress.

"Eights Week," said Martin. "We've got to be thankful to get any kind
of a punt."

Still she grumbled. Martin ran into a projecting bush and, before she
knew what had occurred, her hat had been pushed over her eyes, her hair
disarranged, and her face scratched. She said nothing at all. Worse
than any expostulation! It grew cold and a chilly breeze sprang up.

Inevitably they quarrelled. There was no particular cause for the
outburst. A long week of strain, of mutual revelation and discovery,
of mingled pleasure and annoyance, was bound to tell.

They had at