Cedric broke off, looking much harassed.
"If Pam married a rich man—which she probably will," said Violet, with a low laugh.
"We can't take distant possibilities into consideration," Barbara interposed sharply. "We're dealing with actual facts."
Alex looked from one to the other with bewilderment. She hardly understood what they were all discussing. From the natural home of her childhood and girlhood, where she had lived as unthinking of ways and means as every other girl of her class and generation, she had passed into the convent world, where all was communal, and the rights of the individual a thing part shunned, part unknown. She could not, at first, grasp that Cedric and Barbara and Violet, perhaps Pam and Archie, too, were all wondering how she would be able to maintain herself on fifty pounds a year.
"Of course," Barbara was saying, "Alex could come to me for a bit—I'd love to have you, dear—but you saw for yourself what a tiny place mine is—and there's only Ada. I don't quite know what she'd say to having two people instead of one, I must say—"
"We want her, too," Violet exclaimed caressingly. "Let us have her for a little while, Barbara,—while you're preparing Ada's mind for the shock." She broke into her low, gurgling laugh again.
Barbara looked infinitely relieved.
"What do you think, Alex? It isn't that I wouldn't love to have you—but there's no denying that ways and means do count, and in a tiny household like mine, every item adds up."
"Oh," said Alex desperately, "I know what you must feel—the difficulty of—of knowing what to do with me. It's always been like that, ever since I was a little girl. I've made a failure of everything. Don't you remember—Barbara, you must—old Nurse saying, 'Alex will never stick to anything'? And I never have, I never shall. I can only make dreadful muddles and failures, and upset you all. If only one could wreck one's own life without interfering with other people's!"
There was a silence, which Alex, after her outburst, knew very well was not one of comprehension. Then Cedric said gently: