Rosemary looked at her in wondering dismay. "But the utter boredom!" she said. "I should go mad."

"Yes, but I'm rather placid, you know," replied Miss Allison apologetically.

"I envy you. Cigarette?"

Miss Allison accepted one.

"It must be great to be able to take what comes, as you do," pursued Rosemary. "I wish I were like it. But it's no good blinking facts: I'm not."

"Well, I don't say that I should choose to be anyone's companion," said Miss Allison. "Only I'm a fool at shorthand and have no talents."

"I expect you have, really," said Rosemary in an absent voice and with her gaze fixed broodingly upon a spray of heliotrope. "I told you I was getting to the end of my tether, didn't I? Well, I believe I've reached the end."

There did not seem to be anything to say in answer to this. Miss Allison tried to look sympathetic.

"The ironic part of it is that having me doesn't make Clement happy," said Rosemary. "Really he'd be better off without me. I don't think I'm the sort of person who ought ever to marry. I'm probably a courtesan manquйe. You see, I know myself so frightfully well—I think that's my Russian blood coming out."

"I didn't know you had any," remarked Miss Allison, mildly interested.

"Good God, yes! My grandfather was a Russian. I say, do you mind if I call you Patricia?"

"Not at all," said Miss Allison politely.

"And please call me Rosemary. You don't know how I hate that ghastly 'Mrs. Kane.' There's only one thing worse, and that's 'Mrs. Clement.'" She threw away her half-smoked cigarette and added with a slight smile: "I suppose I sound a perfect brute to you? I am, of course. I know that. You mustn't think I don't see my own faults. I know I'm selfish, capricious, extravagant and fatally discontented. And the worst of it is that I'm afraid that's part of my nature, and even if I go away with Trevor, which seems to me now the only way I can ever be happy, it won't last."