"No, it's the visitors' room. I'm glad you like it."
"I didn't say I liked it. It looked as if you always had it ready for a lady. I don't like the look of your man's wife either."
Woolf laughed at the downright expression of opinion.
"She's all right," he said significantly. "She's as quiet as the grave and much deeper."
"She's no good."
"Who is! Are you?" He took her hand and tried to draw her to him. Maggy's form grew rigid.
"Hands off," she said coolly. "There's nothing doing here."
"Won't you let me kiss you?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"For the same reason that I keep my hat on, and you don't. One's out of respect for me and the other's respect for myself."
"You're a funny girl!" Woolf drew back and looked at her. "Why are you on the defensive?"
"Haven't I need to be?"
"Not with me, surely. I want to be friends with you."
"Friends!" She threw up her chin aggressively. "I've only got one in the world."
"And who is he?" Woolf asked with quick curiosity.
"She's a girl. I chum with her."
"Women can't be friends with each other," he asserted didactically. "Especially when they're of the same profession. A Hottentot woman and her civilized sister have only one occupation—the study and pursuit of man. You're like doctors, all at each other's throats. Some of you practise homeopathy, the others are allopaths. The first marry and take their husbands in small doses, the allopaths believe in quantity. Your friend would probably leave you to-morrow if she got a good enough chance."
"Talk about some one you know," Maggy responded.
The contentious conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Woolf's man announcing lunch. They went into the dining room. Maggy was hungry and did justice to an excellent meal. But she refused to drink anything stronger than lemon squash, and when Woolf pressed her for her reason for such abstinence she gave him none. She had seen her mother suffer from alcoholic excess. The smell of spirits always turned her sick.
When they were alone Woolf leant towards her.
"Now let's talk," he said. "What do you want me to do for you?"
"Nothing," replied Maggy shortly.
"Do you dislike me?"
She looked at him and away again.
"No. That doesn't mean you're fascinating. You're the sort of man who might get round a girl like me if I was fool enough to listen to you. Lexie—that's my chum—would tell you off at once."
"I should think she's a man-hater." Woolf was beginning to feel a distinct antipathy towards Maggy's friend.
"No, she isn't. Only men aren't much in our line. You can see prowling beasts without going to the Zoo."
Maggy's conversational trick of generalizing led away from the point Woolf wanted to press.
"You doubt me," he said. "You'd believe in me if I wanted to marry you—"
"Oh, cut it! You don't!" she interjected.
"Marriage is an institution for the protection of women who wear flannel petticoats. It doesn't follow that a girl can't trust a man because he offers her a lot more than most wives get."
"He offers her a lot more because he knows it won't last for long. I'm practical."
"If you were practical you'd listen to my offer."
"Oh, I'll listen."
"Well, I'd like to make you really comfortable. You ought to have a smart little place of your own, and dainty things, and money to spend."
"It's as old as the hills. I daresay I'm not the only girl you've made that proposition to. Try somebody else. I'm going now."
"You mean you won't think about it?"
Maggy was silent for a minute.
"Oh, I shall think about it right enough, don't you worry," she said in an odd voice. "I shall think about it when I'm hungry. I shall think about it when I'm tired. It's a long way from the theater to King's Cross Road. I shall think about it when I see the other girls sneering at me because I haven't got a boy. I shall think about it in the summer time when people go to the sea and take off their clothes, and I shall think of it in the winter when I'd like a few more on. You needn't think I don't know that you're tempting me." Her voice nearly broke.
"Then be friends," urged Woolf again. "What's to prevent you?"
"Lexie. Lexie would be cut up. Lexie has made me think more of myself since I've known her than I ever did before. If it wasn't for her do you think I'd traipse home night after night to that slummy little room that's dear at fifteen shillings a week? She's not used to the life, and if she can hold out against it I ought to be able to who've never known anything better. Well, thanks for a nice lunch. You've fed the hungry. That's one good mark for you."
Woolf led her back into the other room and shut the door.
"You'll kiss me before you go," he said imperiously.
He had her by the wrists. His strong grasp sent a thrill through her. Though she resisted she wished there were no harm in letting him kiss her, wished that his offer were not based on wrong-doing. It was not only because he could give her material things that she was tempted. She had stumbled across a man who made a direct call to her nature, and she knew it. De Freyne, callously unselective, could not have deliberately chosen an individual more likely to encompass Maggy's surrender. Woolf was not young: nearly forty. But he was so blatantly good-looking, so—so swaggering. Maggy knew he was selfish and probably a little unkind, possibly bad-tempered, that he would never care for a woman in the way that women crave to be cared for, tenderly, protectively. All the same, she knew that she would get too fond of him if she saw him often and that he would go to her head....
Even now she felt dizzy. Her habitual self-confidence deserted her. She experienced an overmastering desire to fling herself into his arms and cry and cry, to tell him how difficult everything was, and how she had tried.... But she knew perfectly well that he would not understand. He was a man who would never understand women's feelings because he did not think them worth understanding. As long as there were women in the world, plenty of pretty ones, their feelings did not matter. Flowers did not feel when one picked them, or if they did, well, that was what they were there for: to be picked.
"You don't want to kiss me against my will, do you?"
Maggy struggled free. As a matter of fact Woolf's grasp had relaxed. He was quite ready for the interview to end. He had a business appointment at three and did not want to be late for it. If Maggy had offered him her soul at three that afternoon, or what interested him far more, her substance, he would not have foregone his appointment. That was the man.
"Well, good-by," he said, without further persuasion. "You can go home in my car. I'll 'phone to the garage now."
Maggy went to get her purse and gloves. When she returned Woolf was no longer in the room. It was five minutes to three.
"The car is at the door, miss," the man told her. "Mr. Woolf had an appointment to keep. He asked me to say would you ring him up any time you wished to speak to him. This is his telephone number, miss." He handed her a card.
He helped her into the car and tucked the linen rug round her with just that touch of familiarity which the good servant avoids. Maggy knew perfectly well what he and his wife thought about her. Unused as she was to servants, good or bad, she was quick enough to appreciate that they took their tone from their employer and his habits.
She leant back in the car and gave herself up to the luxury of being driven in it. The celerity with