Aliette, whom Mollie visited next day, was even more shocked than Betty Masterman at the change in her sister's appearance. The girl seemed utterly altered, utterly different from the fancy-free maiden of Moor Park. She came into the connubial room nervously; almost forgot to kiss; entirely forgot to inquire after Ronnie; refused to take off her hat, and sat down on the edge of the hard sofa gingerly as though it had been an omnibus seat.

"Rather awful, isn't it?" Aliette, with a comprehensive glance at her surroundings, broke the social ice. "You mustn't mind."

"I don't mind. But it is rather awful." A pause. "I suppose you had to do it, Alie?"

"Do what? Come and live here?"

"No. The whole thing." Aliette did not answer, and her sister went on. "I wish you hadn't had to. It's been simply rotten at home. Mother and dad----" She broke off, biting her lip. "They aren't so bad really; it's Eva who's putrid."

"Eva never did like either of us."

For the first time in their lives, the sisters felt shy with one another. Caroline Staley, entering, broad-hipped, a smile on her full lips and a tea-tray in her large hands, noticed the tension.

"My, Miss Mollie!" ejaculated the tactful Caroline, "but you aren't looking yourself at all. You ought to take that hat off and lie down awhile."

Tea relaxed the tension; but made intimate conversation no easier. Between them and their old intimacy rose--as it seemed--insurmountable barriers. It was Mollie who, involuntarily, pulled those barriers down.

"I say," she asked abruptly, "isn't Hector going to do anything?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Doesn't it make you frightfully unhappy?"

"Only for Ronnie's sake."

Mollie did her best to restrain indignation. Woman-like, she could not help blaming Ronnie for the whole occurrence. Girl-like, she could not quite divine the immensity of passion behind her sister's steady eyes; till, somehow infected by that passion, her thoughts veered to James. Suppose James had been married. Married to a lunatic, say, or a drunkard? Tied to some rotten wife, for instance, a wife who made him unhappy? Suppose that James had said to her, "Mollie, let's cut the painter"?

And suddenly Mollie's indignation passed, leaving her contrite.

"Alie," she said, "I ought to have come up to town before. I oughtn't to have left you alone all this time. I'm afraid I've been"--she faltered--"rather a beast about the whole thing."

"You haven't." Aliette came across to the sofa, and took her sister's hand. "It's been simply wonderful of you to forgive our thoughtlessness, our lack of consideration----"

"Oh, that!" interrupted Mollie. "I wasn't thinking about that." She fell silent; and again, to her contrite mind, the romance of Aliette and Ronnie assumed a personal significance.

So this was love--thought the girl--the real thing! Love without orange-blossom, without wedding-presents. Love so gloriously reckless of material considerations that it could exist in and defy the most sordid surroundings, the completest ostracism from one's kind.

"It's you who are wonderful," said Mollie.

And all that afternoon, as conversation grew easier between them, as she learned from a hesitant Aliette of the real Hector and the real Ronnie, of the snubs one had to put up with, and of the sympathy which was even harder than the snubs to bear, of the petty, almost indecent economies to be anticipated now that Ronnie's professional income looked like failing (soon it might be necessary to sacrifice Ponto, whose board and lodging at a near-by stable cost fifteen shillings a week), the girl, continually testing her own affection for James on the touchstone of Aliette's love for Ronnie, could not but find it a little lacking in that spirit of service which is truest comradeship.

"But where is Ronnie?" she asked, as they kissed au revoir.

"With his mother, I expect," smiled Aliette. "He said, when you phoned last night, that we'd probably like to be alone."