"It might. Are you sure you don't mind?"

"Oh, go along with you!"

Her mother was pleased. She was always pleased when she scored a point
against philosophy.


III.

Mr. and Mrs. Belk were coming along High Row. She avoided them by turning
down the narrow passage into Mr. Horn's yard and the Back Lane. From the
Back Lane you could get up through the fields to the school-house lane
without seeing people.

She hated seeing them. They all thought the same thing: that you wanted
Maurice Jourdain and that you were unhappy because you hadn't got him.
They thought it was awful of you. Mamma thought it was awful, like--like
Aunt Charlotte wanting to marry the piano-tuner, or poor Jenny wanting to
marry Mr. Spall.

Maurice Jourdain knew better than that. He knew you didn't want to marry
him any more than he wanted to marry you. He nagged at you about your
hair, about philosophy--she could hear his voice nag-nagging now as she
went up the lane--he could nag worse than a woman, but he knew. _She_
knew. As far as she could see through the working of his dark mind, first
he had cared for her, cared violently. Then he had not cared.

That would be because he cared for some other woman. There were two