"No, thank you."
The parlourmaid softened again.
"Some tea and some nice bread-and-butter?"
Lilian gave a smile of appreciation, and thought:
"I will make this girl fond of me."
"Up here'm?"
"Yes, please."
She was alone. The room was full of secrets. She opened a wardrobe, and started back; it held Felix's suits. She gazed at herself in the mirror of the naked dressing-table; tears were slipping down her wasted white cheeks. Mechanically she pulled at a drawer. Neckties, scores of them, neatly arranged. Could one man have possessed so many neckties? She picked up a necktie at random, striped in violent colours. She did not know, and could not have known, that the colours were those of a famous school club. She was entirely ignorant of the immense, the unparalleled prestige of club colours in the organized life of the ruling classes. Mechanically again, she put the necktie to her mouth, nibbled at it, bit it passionately, voluptuously; the feel of the woven stuff thrilled her; and that club necktie was understood, comprehended, realized, as no club necktie ever before in all the annals of the sacred public-school tradition. Lilian sobbed like a child. The parlourmaid entered with the tea and the nice bread-and-butter, and saw the child munching the necktie, and was shaken in the steely citadel of her virtue.
"You'll feel better when you've drunk this'm," said the parlourmaid lumpily, pouring out some tea. "Hadn't you better sit down'm? ... It won't do for you to tire yourself."
God! The highly-trained girl so far forgot herself as to spill a tear into the milk-jug!