“Were you—flirting?”
“I was.”
“I thought you were glad to see me—as glad as I was to see you.”
“I was glad. I’d been having a foolishly miserable time. Living in this house is rather terrible with nothing but women, unmarried women. You don’t know. They come here young, many of them from the country. Then they go out to work in the day and come in in the evening. They haven’t enough money to pay for amusements. They’re too respectable to look for fun in the streets. They hardly dare have a man-friend, the others are so jealous, so rigid, so uncomprehending.”
René said:
“I had a feeling that my presence here was an offense.”
Cathleen laughed:
“That’s why I asked you. I thought it would do them good to see you. It did me so much good. I think I was getting infected by it. Lotta, my friend, escapes into the country now and then. She has a cottage. I go too sometimes, but her consolations are not mine. She has a garden and makes jams and fruit-wines. I want something more than that. I don’t want to console myself until I have to. If I were going to do that I might just as well have stayed with my mother. On the other hand, I don’t want to flirt with you, my friend. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”
“What do you want, then?”