The Infinite Moment

How Do I Do?

Frances paused to look into the showcase that was fastened to the wall between the pastry cook’s and the hairdresser’s. It was not a novelty. Passing it a hundred times, she could not fail to be aware of it, or of the open door beside it, but until now it had not really impinged. There had been no reason for it to impinge. Hers was a future that seemed, in its main outlines at least, and in so far as any woman’s is, pretty well charted.

Nor did the carefully worded leaflets behind the glass refer to the future directly. They offered Character Delineation, Scientific Palmistry, Psychological Prognosis, Semasiological Estimates, and other feats just beyond the scope of the Witchcraft Act or the practical interests of the police, but the idea of the future somehow showed through. And now, for the first time, Frances found herself interested for it is not every day that one sends her ring back, and then looks out upon a suddenly futureless world.

All the same, and unlikely though it seemed at the moment, there must be a future of some kind lying ahead of her…

She read about Mastery of one’s Fate, Development of one’s Personality, Guidance of one’s Potentialities, and through a number of testimonials from persons who had been greatly helped, valuably guided, spiritually strengthened, and generally rendered more capable of managing themselves by the sympathetic counsels of Se–ora Rosa.

It was the word “guidance” occurring several times that set up the most responsive echo. Frances did not exactly imagine that she could go to this perfect stranger and extract a plan for living a neatly readjusted life, but the world, ever since she had handed that small, registered package across the post-office counter, had become a place for which she had no plans of her own, and she felt that an improved acquaintance with one’s potentialities might give some kind of a lead…

She turned. She glanced along the street both ways, with an air of noticing and approving the freshness of the early summer day. Then, having observed no one whom she knew, she edged into the doorway, and climbed the dusty stairs “Marriage, of course,” said Se–ora Rosa, with the slightest trace of a hiccup. “Marriage! That’s what they all want to know about. Want to know what he looks like Ôs’ if that mattered. Don’t want to know if he’ll beat Ôem, or leave Ôem, or murder Ôem. Jus’ what he looks like so they’ll know where to throw the lash—the lasso.” She took a drink from the glass beside her, and went on: “Same with babies. Not interested to know if they’ll turn out to be gangsters or film shtarsh. Jus” want to know how many. No “riginality. No “magination. Jus” like a lot of sheep ‘cept, of course, they want to ram each.” She hiccupped discreetly again.

Frances started to get up. “I think, perhaps” she began.

“No. Sit down,” the Se–ora told her. Then, while Frances hesitated, she repeated not loudly, but quite firmly: “Sit down!”

Against her inclinations, and rather to the front of the chair, Frances sat down.

She regarded the Se–ora across the small table which held a crystal and a lamp, and knew that she had been a fool to come into the place at all. The Se–ora, with her swarthy skin, glittering dark eyes, and glaringly unnatural red hair, was difficult to visualise in the role of sympathetic counsellor at the best of times: slightly drunk, with the high comb which supported her mantilla listing to the right, an artificial rose sagging down over her left ear, and her heavy eyelids half-lowered against the trickle of her cigarette’s smoke, she became more than displeasing. It was, in fact, absurd not to have turned back at the very first sight of her, but somehow Frances had lacked the resolution then, and not been able to gain it since.

“Fair return. That’s my rule, an” no one’s going to say I break it,” announced the Se–ora. “Fee in advance, an” fair return. Mind you, there’s nothing against a bit more for special satisfaction given, but fair return you shall have.”

She switched on a small, heavily pink-shaded lamp close to the crystal, crossed the room a trifle uncertainly to draw the window curtains, and returned to her chair.

“Cosier,” she explained. “ÔS easier to conshentrate, too.”

She stubbed out her cigarette, drank off most of the remaining contents of her glass, gave her comb a push towards the vertical, and prepared to get to work.

“ÔS on me today,” she observed. “Some days it’s on you; some days it’s not, never can tell till you start. But I can feel it now. Tell you pretty near anything today, I could, wouldn’t, of course; doesn’t do, but could. Something special you’d be wanting to know, beyond husband, babies, an” the usual?”

The low lighting worked quite a change in the Se–ora. It modified the redness of her hair, made the lines of her face more decisive; it glinted fascinatingly on her long brass earrings swinging like bellclappers, and glistened even more brightly in her dark eyes.

“Erno,” said Frances. “As a matter of fact, I think I’ve changed my mind. So if you”

“Nonsense,” the Se–ora told her, shortly. “You’ll only be back in a day or two if you do, and then it might not be on me the way it is today. We’ll start on your future husband.”

“No. I’d really rather not” began Frances.

“Nonsense,” said the Se–ora again. “They all want that. Jus” you keep quiet now. Got to conshentrate.”

She leaned forward, shading the crystal with one hand from the direct light while she gazed into it. Frances watched uncomfortably. For a time nothing happened, except that the earrings swung slowly to a stop. Then: “H’m,” said the Se–ora, with a suddenness that made Frances jump. “Nice looking young fellow, too.”

Frances had a vague feeling that such pronouncements, whatever their worth, were usually made in a more impressive tone and form, but the Se–ora went on: “Nice tie. Dark blue an” old gold, with a thin red stripe in the blue.”

Frances sat quite still. The Se–ora leaned closer to the crystal.

“Couple of inches taller than you, I’d say. “Bout five foot ten. Smooth fair hair. Nice mouth. Good chin. Straight nose. Eyes sort of dark grey with a touch of blue. Got a small, crescent shaped scar over his left eyebrow, an old one. He “Stop UP Frances snapped.

The Se–ora looked up at her for a moment, and then back to the crystal.

“Now, as to children” she went on.

“Stop it, I tell you!” Frances told her again. “I don’t know how you found out about him, but you’re wrong.

Yesterday I’d have believed you, but now you’re quite wrong!” The recollection of putting the ring with its five winking diamonds into its nest of cottonwool, and closing the box on it became unbearably vivid. She was exasperatedly aware of tears starting to well up.

“There’s often jus” a bit of a tiff” began the Se–ora.

“How dare you! It’s not just a tiff, at all. It’s finished. I’m never going to see him again. So you might as well stop this farce now,” Frances said.

The Se–ora stared. “Farce!” she exclaimed, incredulously. “You call my work farce! Why, youI’d have you know”

Frances was angry enough for tears to wait.

“Farce!” she repeated. “Farce, and cheating! I don’t know how you find out about people, but this time it hasn’t worked. Your information’s out of date. You... you you’re just a drunken old cheat, taking advantage of people who are unhappy. That’s what you are.”

She stood up to get herself out of the room before the tears should come.

The Se–ora glared back at her. She snatched across the table, and caught her wrist in a grip like a steel claw.

“Cheat!” she shouted. “Cheat! Why, you... you silly ignorant little ninny! Sit down!”

“Let me go,” Frances told her. “You’re hurting my wrist.”

The Se–ora leaned closer. Her brows were lowered angrily over eyes that glittered more than ever. “Sit down there!” she ordered again.

Frances suddenly found herself more scared than angry. She stood for a moment, trying to outstare the Se–ora; then her eyes dropped. She sat down, partly because the grip on her wrist was urging her, but more from sheer nervousness.

Se–ora Rosa sat down again, too, but she continued to hold Frances” wrist across the table.

“Cheat!” she muttered. “You called me a cheat!”

Frances avoided meeting her gaze.

“Somebody must have told you about me and Edward,” she said, stubbornly.

“That told me,” said the Se–ora, pointing her free hand at the crystal. “That, an” nothing else. Tells me a lot, that does. But you don’t believe it, do you? Think I’m a liar as well as a cheat, don’t you?”

“I didn’t really mean” Frances began.

“Don’t give me that. “Course you mean it. No respec’. No respec” at all. Ninnies like you need a lesson to teach “em respec’. Sh’ll I tell you when you’re going to die, and how? Or when your Edward’s going to die?”

“No, no, please!” said Frances.

“Ha! Don’t believe me but you’re afraid to hear,” observed the Se–ora.

“I’m sorry, really I am. I was upset. Please let me” Frances began, but the Se–ora was not to be easily mollified.

“Farce! Cheat!” she muttered again. “Ninny!” she added forcibly, and then fell silent.

The silence lengthened, but the grip on Frances” wrist did not relax. Presently, curiosity drove her to a swift upward glance. She had a glimpse of a quite different expression on the Se–ora’s face more alarming in some indefinite way, than her former anger. She appeared to have had some kind of inspiration. Her hand clutched Frances” wrists more tightly.

“Show you, that’s what,” she said, decisively. “Sick of ninnies. Jus” show you Look in the crysh... crystal!”

Frances kept her eyes down. The hand on her wrist twisted painfully.

“Look in the crystal!” commanded the Se–ora.

Unwillingly Frances lifted her head a little, and looked at it. It was a quite uninteresting lump of glass, showing a number of complicated and distorted reflections.

“This is silly,” she said. “I can’t see anything there. You’ve no right to”

“Be quiet! Jus” look!” snapped the Se–ora.

Frances went on looking, wondering at the same time how she was going to get herself out of this. Even if she were able to pull herself free, it was impossible in the small room for her to reach the door without coming within reach of the Se–ora’s grasp again and there’d be delay in getting the door open, too. If Then her thoughts broke off as she noticed that the crystal was no longer clear. It seemed to have become fogged, rather as if it had been breathed upon. But the foggy look grew thicker as she watched until it was like smoke wreathing inside it. Queer! Some trick of the old woman’s, of course… Some kind of hypnotic effect which made it seem to grow bigger and bigger… It appeared to widen out and out as she watched it until there was nothing at all anywhere but convolving whorls of fog…

Then, like a flash, it was gone, and she was sitting in her chair, looking at the clear crystal.

The grip on her arm was gone, too; and so, when she looked up, was the Se–ora…

Frances snatched up her bag, and made for the door. No sound came from the inner room as she tiptoed across. She opened the door carefully, closed it quietly behind her, and skipped swiftly away down the stairs.

A very unpleasant experience, Frances told herself, walking briskly away. In fact, being held there like that against her will was the sort of thing one ought to tell a policeman about; probably it ranked as assault, or something quite serious, really… Still not quite certain whether she was wanting to see a policeman or not, she emerged from her thoughts, and looked about her.

In the very first glance she made a discovery which drove such frivolous subjects as policemen right out of her mind. It was that everyone else in sight who had decided that the time for cotton had arrived was clad in a frock very much shorter and very much narrower than her own. She stared at them, bewildered. She must have had an inconceivable preoccupation with her own affairs not to have realised that there had been such a radical change of line. She paused for a moment in front of a shop window to observe the reflection of the blue and white striped cotton frock that she had thought good for another summer. It looked terrible; just as if she had been upholstered. Another glance from it to the other frocks made her go hot with embarrassment: they must all be thinking she had come out wrapped in a bedspread Clearly, there was one thing to be done about that, and done at once She started to walk hurriedly in the direction of Weilberg’s Modes Frances reemerged into the street half an hour later, feeling considerably soothed. The congenial occupation of shopping, and the complete clearing of mental decks required for concentration on the choice of a creation in an amusing pattern of palm-trees and pineapples, had helped to put Sefiora Rosa into proper perspective. Considered calmly, over an icecream-soda, the affair dwindled quite a lot and her own part in it came to seem curiously spineless. Her intention of informing the police faded. If there were a charge, and she had to give evidence, she would scarcely be able to help exhibiting herself first as a fool for having gone into the place at all, and then as a nitwit for staying when she did not want to. Moreover, it would very likely be reported in the papers, and she would hate that so would Edward Which brought one back to thinking of Edward… And to wondering whether one had perhaps behaved like a silly little fool there, too. After all, he had known Mildred for years and years and just two or three dances… People said one ought to be careful about not feeling too possessive… All the same, just a few days after he had become engaged… No, it didn’t do to look cheap, or easygoing, either… And yet… Really, life could be very difficult.

Though Frances decided that she would walk home, she did not consciously choose her route. That is to say, she did not tell herself: “I’ll go by St. James’s Avenue, past that house that we decided would just suit us.” It simply was that her feet happened to carry her that way.

Coming nearer to the house, she walked more slowly. There was a moment when she almost decided to turn back and go round by another way. But she squashed that. One could not go about for ever avoiding every reminder: a person had to get used to things, sooner or later. She walked resolutely on. Presently she was able to see the upper floor of the house above the hedge. A comfortable, sensible looking, friendly house: not new, but modern, and without being moderne. It gave her a little knot high in her chest to see it again now. Then, as more of it came into view, the knot gave way to a feeling of dismay. There were curtains in the windows that had been blank, the hedges had been trimmed, the board which had announced “For Sale” was gone.

She paused at the front gate. An astonishing amount had been done to the place in the few days since she had last seen it. It looked altogether fresher. The flowerbeds in the front garden were bright with tulips, the fig-tree against the side wall had been cut and tied back, the windows shone. The doors of the garage were open, and a comfortable-looking car stood on the concrete apron in front. The lawn had been closely mown. On it, a little girl of four or so, dressed in a blue frock, was conducting a tea-party with earnest admonitions to the guests who consisted of three sizes of teddybear and a golliwog.

Frances was filled with a sharp indignation. The house had been almost hers: she had quite decided that it was the one that her father was going to give them for a wedding present and now it had been snatched away without a word of warning. It might not have been so bad if it had not somehow contrived already to look so aggressively settled… Not that it actually mattered, of course, now that she had finished with Edward… All the same, there was a feeling of having been cheated in some way that one did not quite understand The little girl on the lawn became aware of someone at the gate. She broke off scolding the golliwog to look up. She dropped the miniature cup and saucer that she was holding, and started to run towards Frances.

“Mummy!” she called.

Frances looked around and behind her. There was no one there. Then she bent down instinctively as the small figure hurtled itself toward her. The little girl flung her arms round her neck.

“Mummy,” she said, with breathy intensity. “Mummy, you must come and tell Golly not to. He will talk with his mouth full.”

“Er” said Frances, out of the sudden stranglehold. “I... er... you, I mean”

“Oh, do come along, Mummy,” she said. “He’s “veloping bad habits.”

Dazedly, Frances allowed herself to be led across the lawn to the tea-party. The little girl improved the dissolute-looking golliwog by propping him into a sitting position.

“There,” she told him. “Now Mummy’s here you’ll have to behave. Tell him, Mummy.” She looked at Frances expectantly.

“I... er... urn you” Frances began, confusedly.

The child looked up at her, puzzled.

“What’s the matter, Mummy?” she asked Frances stared back at her, recollecting photographs of herself at about the same age. A peculiar feeling began to come over her. The small earnest face seemed to swim slightly as she looked at it. Its expression grew concerned.

“Aren’t you feeling well, Mummy?”

Frances pulled herself together.

“I’mI’m all right... er... darling,” she said, unsteadily. “Then do tell Golly he mustn’t. It’s awfly rude.”

Frances went down on her knees. She was glad to: the ground felt more solid that way. She leaned towards the offending golliwog who promptly fell flat on his face and was hastily propped up again by his mistress.

“Er... Golly,” Frances told him. “Golly, I’m very shocked indeed to hear this about you. People who are invited to parties…”

So real..! All of it..!

Now that the lump in her chest which wasn’t quite panic or scare, but a bit like both, had subsided, Frances found herself able to regard the situation a little more calmly. The classic certificate was to be obtained by pinching oneself; she had done that, sharply, but without changing any of it a bit. She looked at her hand, flexed it; it was her perfectly familiar hand. She plucked a little grass from the lawn beside her; real grass, beyond doubt. She listened to the sounds about her; they had an authentic quality difficult to deny. She picked up the nearest teddybear, and examined it; no dream ever finished anything with that amount of detail. She sat back on her heels, looking up at the house, noticing the striped chairs on the porch, the patterns of the curtains, the recent painting… One had always thought that hallucinations must be vague, misty experiences… All this had a solidity that was rather frightening…

“Mummy,” said the little girl, turning away from her tea-party, and standing up.

Frances” heart jumped slightly.

“Yes, dear?” she said.

“ÔMportant business. Will you see that Golly behaves himself?”

“II think he understands now, dear,” Frances told her.

The small face in its frame of fair hair looked doubtful.

“P’raps. He’s rather wicked, though. Back soon. “Mportant.”

Frances watched the blue frock vanish as the child scampered away round the corner of the house on her mysterious errand. She felt suddenly forlorn. For some moments she remained on her knees, returning the boot-button stare of the teddybear in her hands. Then the absurdity of the whole thing flooded over her. She dropped the bear, and got to her feet. At just that moment a man emerged from the front of the house on to the porch.

And he wasn’t Edward… He wasn’t a bit like him… He wasn’t anybody she’d ever seen before in her life.

He was tall, rather thin, but broad in the shoulders. His dark hair curled a little, and there were slight flecks of grey over his ears. He had been making towards the car, but at the sight of her he stopped. His eyes crinkled at the corners, and seemed to light up.

“Back so early!” he said. “New frock, too! And looking like a schoolgirl in it. How do you manage it?”

“Uh!” gasped Frances, caught in a strong, and entirely unexpected embrace.

“Look, darling,” he continued, without loosening his hold. “I simply must tear off now and see old Fanshawe. I won’t be more than an hour.”

His hug brought the rest of Frances” breath out in another involuntary “Uh!” He kissed her soundly, slapped her behind affectionately, and dashed for the car. A moment later it carried him out of her sight.

Frances stood getting her breath back, and staring after him. She found that she was shaking, and filled with a most odd sensation of weakness, particularly in the knees. She staggered over to one of the chairs on the porch, and subsided there. For a space she sat motionless, her eyes set glazedly on nothing. Then, not quite accountably, she burst into tears.

When emotion had declined to a sniff-and-dab stage, it was succeeded by misgivings about the orthodoxy of her situation. In whatever peculiar way it had come about, the fact remained that she had been “Mummy” to someone else’s child, warmly embraced by someone else’s husband, and now was sitting snivelling on someone else’s porch. A convincing explanation of all this to the someone else looked like being so difficult that the best way out would be to get clear as soon as possible, and avoid it.

Frances gave a final dab, and got up with decision. She retrieved her bag from the medley of teddybears and teacups, and glanced at the mirror in the flap. She frowned at it, and burrowed for her compact. In the act of a preparatory scrub on the sieve, the sound of a step caused her to look up. A woman was coming in through the gateway. A moderately tall, nicely built woman, dressed in a light-green linen suit, and carrying it well; a woman who was a few years older than herself but still… At that moment the woman turned so that Frances could see her face, and all coherent thought expired. Frances” jaw sagged. She gaped…

The other woman noticed her. She looked hard at her, but showed no great surprise. She turned off the path and approached across the grass. There was nothing alarming about her; indeed, she was wearing the trace of a smile.

“Hullo!” she said. “I was just thinking this morning that you must be due somewhere about now.”

Frances” bag slipped out of her fingers, and split at her feet, but her eyes never left the other’s face.

The woman’s eyes were a little deeper and wiser than those she was wont to see in the mirror. There were the very faintest touches of shadows at their corners, and at the corners of the mouth. The lips favoured a shade of colour just a trace darker… Something as indescribable as the touch of dew had been exchanged for a breath of sophistication. But otherwise… otherwise…

Frances tried to speak, but all that came was a croak, strangled in rising panic.

“It’s all right,” said the other. “Nothing to be scared about.” She linked her arm into Frances’, and led her back to the porch. “Now sit down there and just relax. You don’t need to worry a bit.”

Frances sank unresistingly into the chair, and stared dumbly at her. Presently, the other opened her bag.

“Cigarette?” she suggested. “Oh, no. Of course. I didn’t then.” She took one for herself, and lit it. For what seemed a long time they surveyed one another through the smoke. It was the other who broke the silence. She said: “How pretty and charming! If I had only understood more still, I suppose one could scarcely have had innocence and experience.” She sighed, with a touch of wistfulness. Then she shook her head. “But no. No. Being young is very exhausting and unsatisfactory, really although it looks so nice.”

“Er” said Frances. She swallowed with difficulty. “Er... I think I must be going mad.”

The other shook her head. “Oh, no you’re not. Nothing like it. Just take it easy, and try to relax.”

“But this? I mean, you meas if oh, I am going mad! I must be. It’s... it’s impossible!” Frances protested wildly. “Nobody can possibly be in two places at once. I mean, nobody can be twice in the same place at once. I mean, one person can’t be two people, not at the same”

The other leaned across, and patted her hand.

“There, there now. Calm down. I know it’s terribly bewildering at first, but it comes all right. I remember.”

“Yyou remember?” stammered Frances.

“Yes. From when it happened to me, of course. From when I was where you are now.”

Frances stared at her, with a sensation of slowly and helplessly drowning.

“Look,” said the other. “I think I’d better get you a drink. Yes, I know you don’t take it, but this is rather exceptional. I remember how much better I felt for it. Just a minute.” She got up, and went indoors.

Frances leaned back, holding hard to both arms of her chair for reassurance. She felt as if she were falling over and over, a long way down.

The other came back holding a glass, and gave it to her. She drank, spluttering a little over the strange taste of it. But the other had been right: she did immediately begin to feel somewhat better.

“Of course, it’s a bit of a shock,” said the other. “And I fancy you’re right about one person not being in two places up to a point. But the way I think it must happen is that you just seem to yourself to go on being the same person. But you never can be, not really. I mean, as the cells that make you are always gradually being replaced, you can’t really be all the same person at any two times, can you?”

Frances tried to follow that, without success, but: “Well, well, I suppose not quite,” she conceded, doubtfully.

The other went on talking, giving her time to recover herself.

“Well, then when all the cells have been replaced by new ones, over seven years or so, then you can’t any of you be the same person any longer, although you still think you are. So that means that the cells that make up you and me are two quite different sets of cellsso they aren’t really having to be in two different places at once, although it does look like it, don’t you see?”

“I... er... perhaps,” said Frances, on a slightly hysterical note.

“So that sets a sort of natural limit,” the other went on. “There obviously has to be a kind of minimum gap of seven years or so in which it is quite impossible for this to happen at all until all your present cells have been replaced by others, you see.”

“II suppose so,” said Frances, faintly.

“Just take another drink of that. It’ll do you good,” the other advised.

Frances did, and leaned back again in the chair. She wished her head would stop whirling. She did not understand a word that the woman her other self whoever it was had said. All she knew was that none of it could possibly make sense. She kept on hanging on to the arms of the chair until, presently, she began to feel herself growing a little calmer.

“Better? You’ve more colour now,” the other said.

Frances nodded. She could feel the tears of a reaction not far away. The other came over and put an arm round her.

“Poor dear! What a time you’re having! All this confusion, and then falling in love on top of it as if that weren’t confusing enough by itself.”

“Falling in love?” said Frances.

“Why, yes. He kissed you, and patted your behind and you fell in love. I remember so well.”

“Oh, dear, is it like that? I didn’t” Frances broke off. “But how did you know about? Oh, I see, of course”

“And he’s a dear. You’ll adore him. And little Betty’s a love, too, bless her,” the other told her. She paused, and added: “I’m afraid you’ve rather a lot to go through first, but it’s worth it. You’ll remember it’s worth it all?”

“Yesss,” Frances told her vaguely.

She thought for a moment of the man who had come out of the house and gone off in the car. He would be “Yes,” she said, more stoutly. She pondered for some seconds and then turned to look at the other.

“I suppose one does have to grow older, older, I mean,” she amended. “Somehow, I’ve never thought”

The other laughed. “Of course you haven’t. But it’s really very nice, I assure you. Such a much less anxious state than being young though, naturally, you” won’t believe that.”

Frances let her eyes wander round the porch and across the garden. They came to rest on the teddybears and the delinquent golliwog. She smiled.

“I think I do,” she said.

The other smiled, too; her eyes a little shiny.

“I really was rather a sweet thing,” she said.

She got up abruptly.

“Time you were going, my dear: You’ve got to get back to that horrid old woman.”

Frances got up obediently, too. The other seemed to have an idea of what she was talking about, and what was necessary. Frances herself had little enough.

“Back to the Se–ora?” she asked.

The other nodded without speaking. She put her arms round Frances, and held her close to her. She kissed her gently. “Oh, my dear!” she said, unsteadily, and turned her head away.

Frances walked down the short drive. At the gate she turned and looked back, taking it all in.

The other, on the porch, kissed her hand to her. Then she put it over her eyes, and ran into the house.

Frances turned to the right and walked back by the way she had come, towards the town, and the Se–ora…

The cloudiness cleared. The crystal became just a glassball again. Beyond it sat Se–ora Rosa, with her comb awry. Her left hand held Frances” wrist. Frances stared at her for some moments, then: “You are a cheat,” she burst out. “And you’ve been telling lies, too. You described Edward, but the man you showed me wasn’t Edward, he wasn’t even a bit like Edward.” She pulled her arm free with a sudden wrench. “Cheat!” she repeated. “You told me Edward, and you showed me somebody else. It’s all cruel, silly lies and cheating. All of it.”

Her vehemence was enough to take the Se–ora a little aback.

“There was jus” a little mistake,” she admitted. “By “n’unfortunate”

“Mistake!” shouted Frances. “The mistake was my ever coming here at all. You’ve just made a fool of me, and I hate you! I hate you!”

The Se–ora recoiled, and then rallied slightly. With a touch of dignity, she said: “Th’xplanation’s really quite simple. It was”

“No!” Frances shouted. “I don’t want to hear any more about it.”

She pushed the table with all her force. The far edge of it took the Se–ora in the middle. Her chair teetered backwards, then she, table, crystal, and lamp, went down all in a heap. Frances sprang for the door.

The Se–ora grunted, and rolled over. She struggled stertorously to her feet, leaving comb and mantilla in the debris. She made determinedly through the door in Frances” wake. On the landing, she leaned over the bannisters.

“You damned little duffer,” she shouted. “That was your shecond marriagean” I say the hell with both of “em.”

But Frances was already out in the street, beyond earshot.

“A very unpleasant experience, humiliating, too,” thought Frances, as she pegged along, with the jolting step of the incensed. Humiliating because she had nearly no, she’d be honest; for a time she had fallen for it. It had all seemed so convincingly, so really real. Even now she could scarcely believe that she hadn’t walked up that drive, sat on that porch, talked to… but what a ridiculous thing to think… As if it could possibly be..

All the same, to find oneself facing that horrible Se–ora again, and realise that it had all been some kind of trick If she were not in the public street, she could have kicked herself, and wept with mortification…

Presently, however, as the first flush of her anger began to cool, she became more aware of her surroundings. It was borne in upon her attention that a number of the people she met were looking at her with curiosity not quite the right kind of curiosity…

She glanced down at her frock, and stopped dead. Instead of her familiar blue-and-white striped cotton, she was wearing an affair covered with an absurd, niggly pattern of palmtrees and pineapples. She raised her eyes again, and looked round. Every other cotton frock in sight was inches longer and far fuller than hers.

Frances blushed. She walked on, trying to look as if she were not blushing; trying, too, to pretend that the skimpy frock did not make her feel as if she had come out dressed in a rather inadequate bath towel.

Clearly, there was one thing to be done about that; and done at once…

She made haste towards Weilberg’s Modes.