e told herself that
she would not dwell on the subject; but she might as well have tried to
dam a river with a piece of tissue paper, as prevent the thought from
filling her mind; and that probably because--with true feminine
inconsistency--she welcomed it quite as much as she tried to dispel it.

Occasionally she allowed it free entry, regarded it, summed it up as
unsatisfactory, and sternly dismissed it. In three minutes it was welling
up again, perhaps in the same old route, perhaps choosing a different
course.

"Why can't I put the man and everything concerning him out of my mind for
good and all?" she asked herself more than once. And, whatever the reply
to her query, the fact remained that she couldn't; the thought had become
something of an obsession.

Now, when a thought has become an obsession, there is practically only
one way to free oneself from it, and that is by speech. Speech has a way
of clearing the clogged channels of the mind, and allowing the thought to
flow outwards, and possibly to disappear altogether; whereas, without
this clearance, the thought of necessity returns to its source, gathering
in volume with each recoil.

But speech is frequently not at all easy, and that not only because there
is often a difficulty in finding the right confidant, but because, with
the channels thus clogged, it is a distinct effort to clear them. Also,
though subconsciously you may realize its desirability, it is often
merely subconsciously, and reason and common sense,--or, rather, what you
at the moment quite erroneously believe to be reason and common
sense--will urge a hundred motives upon you in favour of silence. Maybe
that most subtle person the devil is the suggester of these motives. If
he can't get much of a look in by direct means, he'll try indirect ones,
and depression is one of his favourite indirect methods. At all events so
the old spiritual writers tell us, and doubtless they knew what they were
talking about.

Now, Trix was perfectly well aware that Pia had something on her mind;
she was also perfectly well aware that it was something she would have an
enormous difficulty in talking about. And the question was, how to give
her even the tiniest lead.

Trix had stated that she had guessed the colour of the soap-bubble; but
she hadn't the faintest notion where it had come into existence, nor
where and how it had burst. Nor had Pia given her directly the smallest
hint of its having ever existed.