MRS. MEDWIN
Mamie looked up at the light above the door, through which the London sky was doubly dim. "I haven't the least idea."
"Then what kind of difference?"
Mamie's gaze was still at the light. "The difference you see."
Lady Wantridge, rather obligingly, seemed to ask herself what she saw. "But I don't see any! It seems, at least," she added, "such an amusing one! And he has such nice eyes."
"Oh, dear eyes!" Mamie conceded; but with too much sadness, for the moment, about the connections of the subject, to say more.
It almost forced her companion, after an instant, to proceed. "Do you mean he can't go home?"
She weighed her responsibility. "I only make out—more's the pity!—that he doesn't."
"Is it then something too terrible———?"
She thought again. "I don't know what—for men—is too terrible."
"Well then, as you don't know what 'is' for women either—good-bye!" her visitor laughed.
It practically wound up the interview; which, however, terminating thus on a considerable stir of the air, was to give Miss Cutter, the next few days, the sense of being much blown about. The degree to which, to begin with, she had been drawn—or perhaps rather pushed—closer to Scott was marked in the brief colloquy that, on her friend's departure, she had with him. He had immediately said it. "You'll see if she doesn't ask me down!"
"So soon?"
"Oh, I've known them at places—at Cannes, at Pau, at Shanghai—to do it sooner still. I always know when they will. You can't make out they don't love me!" He spoke almost plaintively, as if he wished she could.
139
