"My idea of riches nowadays isn't extravagant. But please tell me why you're talking to me about Miss Thurseley. Did you come here to do that?"
"Yes, I did. You're never mentioned to her either. That's it."
Winnie had never moved through the talk. Her slim figure, clad in close-clinging black, was outlined against the grey wall of the studio.
"Oh, that's it! I see."
"So I had to come. Because how is it right? How is it decent, Mrs. Maxon?"
Winnie let the name pass, indeed hardly noticed it. "Wouldn't your ideas be considered rather eccentric?" she asked, with a smile.
"Oh, I feel—I don't have ideas," murmured Amy Ledstone.
"In your home I'm considered the thing that exists, but isn't talked about—that's done and got over."
Again Amy's fixed gaze was on her companion. "Yes," she said, more than half assenting to Winnie's description of herself, yet with a doubt whether "thing" were wholly the word, whether, if "thing" were not the word, the home doctrine could be altogether right.
"What about her then?" she went on.