‘Well, I should never have the nerve to be as blatantly selfish as she is. I think she’s treated you very badly, too: that makes me furious —— I say, Sydney, your powder doesn’t suit my face! Look, it makes me pale blue. You have got a skin, you lucky devil! I always use basanée.’

‘Why do you think she has treated me badly?’ asked Sydney dispassionately. She waited for Veronica to continue, and her expectations of what was coming raced ahead.

‘Well, she has so absolutely given you the go-by, hasn’t she?’ said Veronica, replacing the alabaster lid of the powder-bowl, then looking down to blow some powder off her dress. ‘It was “Sydney this” and “Sydney darling that” and “Where’s Sydney?” and “Sydney and I are going together,” and now he’s come she simply doesn’t see you.’

Sydney, after an interval, leant sideways to push the window farther open. She seemed to have forgotten Veronica, who energetically continued: ‘Of course I’m sorry for you. Everybody’s sorry for you.’

‘Oh,’ said Sydney.

‘Do you mind the way she’s going on?’ asked Veronica curiously.

‘It hadn’t occurred to me that there was anything to mind,’ said Sydney with a high-pitched little laugh and a sensation of pushing off something that was coming down on her like the ceiling in one of her dreams. It seemed incredible that the words Veronica had just made use of should ever have been spoken.

‘Well, it has occurred to everybody else, you know,’ said Veronica, and picking up a string of amber she held it against her dress and leant back to admire the reflection. ‘Take a word of advice from one who knows, my dear,’ said Veronica sagely, ‘and never trust any woman an inch. They’re all alike, cats every one of them.’

‘I thought there was something special you wanted to talk about,’ Sydney broke in eagerly, making a dart for this way of escape from herself. For very nervousness she could not stop talking, and Veronica’s affairs now offered themselves gratefully as a kind of jungle in which her own values could be obscured and forgotten. ‘You were in despair, Veronica,’ she insisted more eagerly; ‘you said just now you were in despair.’

‘I know,’ said Veronica willingly. ‘I did feel like nothing on earth. But you’ve cheered me up immensely. It’s queer how the most ridiculous little worry of somebody else’s will often take one’s mind off one’s own. But there really was something I wanted to ask you about. I’m engaged to Victor – would you advise me to be?’

Sydney could not help feeling that any matron in the Hotel could have done as much for Veronica while she pronounced wisely: ‘Not if you’re not happy, of course.’