They were silent after that, and Marion said she was sure they must have crowds to talk about, and she would go upstairs and ask her mother about Lady Suffolk's drawing-room meeting; and they both made perfectly futile efforts to keep her in the room, and were ashamed of having made them when she had gone, and they were left to face the situation alone.
"I suppose," said Paul, with an effort, "that your holidays will soon be beginning?"
"They have begun to-day," said Katharine. "This is the first day—of my last holidays."
"Your—last holidays?" She felt, without seeing, that he had looked up sharply at her.
"I don't suppose it will interest you," she went on, rousing herself to be more explicit; "but I am giving up my work in London, and going home for good."
There was the slightest perceptible pause before he spoke.
"Would you care to tell me why?"
"Because," said Katharine slowly, "I happened to find out, through a friend, that I was a prig; and I am going home to try and learn not to be a prig any more." She was looking straight at him as she finished speaking. His face was quite incomprehensible just then.
"Was that a true friend?" he asked.
"People who tell us unpleasant things about ourselves are always said to be our true friends, are they not?" she said, evasively.