Choking with emotion and gladness, they found they were holding hands tightly, as if they could never let go. Big tears welled up in Maggy's eyes.
"It doesn't alter one a bit," she got out huskily.
They sat down on the bed, close together, for a moment or two dumb with congestion of thought—the numberless things, essentials affecting themselves, that needed asking and answering.
"Are you happy, Maggy?"
"Don't I look it?" She irradiated happiness. Her eyes beamed, her lips laughed. "I love him, Lexie. It's lovely to love a man whatever way love comes to you. He can't give me the brown egg at breakfast because he's not there then, but I feel just as—oh, you know! I'm not really bad, Lexie. There isn't another man in the world for me. Tell me about yourself, darling. Have you got anything to do yet?"
"No. I'm beginning to wonder whether I ever shall. I can't see anything ahead. It's black."
"Your stomach's empty," said Maggy prosaically. "You look as if you've lived on nothing for ten days."
"I've lived on four-and-sixpence a week."
"Oh, Lexie! And I've had caviare and plovers' eggs and all sorts of expensive things while you've been starving!" She looked horribly contrite. "Do you know that picture advertisement with a big fat cat talking to a thin miserable one and saying it had been fed on somebody's milk? I'm the fat cat because I'm being kept by—"
"Don't!" said Alexandra.