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Edgar looked at his watch.

"I oughtn't to stay," he said. "Fill my cup first. I shall be listening."

"What's a man's feeling about a girl?" Edgar waited. "I mean, about things she does."

"What things?"

"Reckless things. Silly things. I expect men feel different things—and different things about different girls—and different things about different girls at different times. But what I mean is this. All girls except me have very much more liberty than they used to do.—Well, even me, then; but they use their freedom differently. They go about freely, and so on. Don't they? Well, they do silly things—compromise themselves."

"I should think it's harder to do that now than it used to be."

"It's very funny—I don't think it is, somehow. It's all a convention. You can do certain things; but not others. It's odd. But that's not what I wanted to ask you. What I meant was—if somebody had been silly—had, we'll say, gone off with a man, found she didn't care for him, left him.... How would you feel about ... about marrying her?"

"You alarm me!" cried Edgar, still a little amused, but with a constriction of the heart. And then, for a moment, it crossed his mind that she might even be hinting at something which he dared not contemplate. His mind went straight to Harry, to the meeting.... He was conscious of a cold sweat. The thing was so monstrous, and the feeling it aroused in him so passionate, that he did not understand until he had recovered composure what it was further that Claudia was saying.

"That is how you feel?" Claudia was persisting. "You do feel ... well, horror?"

Edgar looked at her. Gradually his expression lightened. Claudia's face was so earnest, her concern to know his view was so obviously sincere.

"I couldn't possibly tell you how I should feel," he answered, smiling.

"Would you marry a girl who ... well, who wasn't quite ... wasn't quite fresh?"

Forgetting the horror he had glimpsed, Edgar thought for an instant.

"It all depends on the girl's attitude," he ventured. "I think for me it would be a question of whether there was any confusion in her mind between me and the other man. If there were, I wouldn't marry her."

"You do admit the right of a girl to freedom of every kind of action?"

"In theory."

"Not in fact?" Claudia was very eager. Edgar answered definitely.

"Not in fact. Any more than I admit the same right in a man."

"Ah, that's the point! You admit the right; but you don't think it should be indulged. I quite agree, Edgar. It's because it affects other people. That's ethics; not conventions. All the difference in the world. Thank you. I've been thinking about it a good deal, and I wanted to hear what you felt. Good boy!"

As he rose from the table, Claudia also rose, and gave him that rare thing, a kiss. For Claudia was no more demonstrative of affection than her brother.

"Sorry to have been a bore," she said abruptly. "I wanted to know. It hadn't anything to do with—with what we'd been talking about, you know."

"God forbid!" said Edgar, as he turned away from her in some haste.

Claudia returned to Percy, who had jumped upon her chair and was giving little sniffs at the odours of breakfast. She patted Percy's head, or rather, his nose, so that he scowled at her; and, after having lifted Percy to another chair, poured herself more coffee. Although Claudia looked so young, and her movements were still the free movements of youth, she was rather grave as she sat at the table. So many little thoughts and intuitions, chiefly about Edgar, but some of them about Patricia, ran in her head. She could not be other than grave.