Tonight, drowsy with the rich wine, out of touch with Miss Pride since she never spoke once she had begun to read the financial page, I felt simultaneously dissatisfied and proud. The dissatisfaction I erroneously (and perhaps intentionally) set down to the sherry, the effect of which had been to usher in a memory of the beer my father had used to pour into my soup. I conjured up his youthful face, so like that of Herr Speyer, and wondered at its incongruity in this rich woman’s parlor, and felt that I had betrayed him since my own presence here was no longer incongruous. It was as if I had supplied his attributes, plagiarizing those my creator had conferred upon me; or, conversely, that I was the chimera, the reflection in the flawed looking glass, the misquoted doctrine, and he the paradigm. His presence became as palpable as that of Miss Pride. The du of Herr Speyer’s remark, that intimate address, lay like a ghostly hand upon my cheek. Like a pilgrim, used to sleeping out of doors and claustrophobic in a house, I inhaled jerkily as if the air within this silent, genteel room were poisonous to my lungs, as though, if I could, I would escape the carnivorous flowers and come again among the harmless edelweiss my father’s fancies had picked for me as I sat hearing his stories in the shop in Chichester.

I rose. “I believe I’ll change and take a little walk, Miss Pride.”

She did not look up. “I hurt your feelings at dinner, did I not?” But there was nothing in her voice to indicate whether she were sorry or if she intended me to apologize for my milk-sop sensitiveness.

“No, ma’am.”

“I’ve told you not to call me ‘ma’am.’ ‘Sir’ is all very well, but ‘ma’am’ I cannot tolerate. You mustn’t take me seriously when I’m crotchety. I wouldn’t let you be an upstairs maid for a dowager duchess, let alone for one of Mrs. Prather’s hypochondriac friends. No, indeed, I don’t intend to turn you out. Stick by me, Sonie, won’t you, and put up with my flip tongue? My father used to tell me I wouldn’t have a friend in the world by the time I was thirty. Perhaps he was right and the only reason people come to see me is that they’re after the rum cakes on my tea-table.”

“Really, Miss Pride,” I protested, “I wasn’t in the least offended. I thought perhaps you had been annoyed by something earlier and were just out of sorts a little.”

“You guessed it perfectly. Now don’t put a false construction on this, for on second thoughts I realized that I was quite wrong. I was annoyed by the way Philip McAllister asked for you on the telephone this afternoon. I had the disagreeable feeling that if you had answered, he would have asked you to meet him for tea, and I said to myself, ‘Surely that child can’t be having rendezvous with Philip who is virtually Hopestill’s fiancé.’ ”