Bertha glanced at Miriam. Miriam flushed. She could not discuss Mademoiselle with two of the girls at once.
“Rum go,” said Bertha.
“You’re right, my son. It’s rum. It’s all over now, anyhow. There’s no accounting for tastes. Poor old Petite.”
5
Miriam woke in the moonlight. She saw Mademoiselle’s face as it had looked at tea-time, pale and cruel, silent and very old. Someone had said she had been in Fräulein’s room again all the afternoon.... Fräulein had spoken to her once or twice during tea. She had answered coolly and eagerly ... disgusting ... like a child that had been whipped and forgiven.... How could Fräulein dare to forgive anybody?
She lay motionless. The night was cool. The screens had not been moved. She felt that the door was shut. After a while she began in imagination a conversation with Eve.
“You see the trouble was,” she said and saw Eve’s downcast believing admiring sympathetic face, “Fräulein talked to me about manner, she simply wanted me to grimace, simply. You know—be like other people.”
Eve laughed. “Yes, I know.”
“You see? Simply.”
“Well, if you wanted to stay, why couldn’t you?”