must be going." She dropped her cheek against the fur with a feline caressing movement and drew a deep, quivering breath.
He stood near her, motionless, attentive. He thought: "What the devil's the matter with the girl?"
She raised her heavy-lidded eyes to his and said: "I wish I were not going to-night."
"I'm sorry. Are you going to tell me why?"
"There's no time to talk. . . . But I'm very unhappy."
He smiled at her in a puzzled way. He had no faith in her unhappiness. He was suspicious of her.
"You'll think me very stupid. Talking like this to you—a stranger. But you're Finch's brother. And you see—oh, I can't explain!" Her eyes were raised beseechingly to his. "I'm so frightfully inexperienced—and—and—I thought I felt something I didn't. I thought"—her expressive face quivered—"oh, I can't go on!"
He said gravely: "I shouldn't worry if I were you. That sort of thing happens to all of us. We imagine that we feel things, and then we let ourselves in for things. . . . But you'll soon forget about it."
"Oh, I wish, I wish," she exclaimed, "that I had someone like you to help me—about life. I know nothing—and Arthur, although he is such a darling to me, is ignorant. He doesn't really know any more than I do."
Renny thought: "The trouble with you both is that you know far too much." He said: "I'm afraid you have come to the wrong man for advice. I don't understand women. I couldn't possibly."
She said, slowly: "I don't quite mean advice."
"What, then, precisely?"
She pushed the white fur back from her throat. "Something more subtle, I guess. Your friendship—if it wouldn't bore you too much."
He thought: "Ha, my girl, you're one of the deep kind!" And said: "Good. We shall be friends."
In the theatre, seated between mother and daughter, he experienced a feeling of exasperation, of being trapped. The two pretty women seemed like gaolers, and this place
