Mona did not answer.
"Are you sure you have got everything you want? Let me put that arm-chair under the gas. That's right. Good night."
Still there was no answer.
"Have you fallen asleep already, Mona, or do you not mean to say good night?"
"Oh, you old humbug!" said Mona suddenly, pushing an arm-chair to the other side of the hearth, and putting her friend unceremoniously into it. "Fire away, in heaven's name! Let me hear all you have to say. Now that I have come, I suppose we must thrash the whole thing out. I withdraw all my conditions. Let us have it out and get it over!"
Doris was almost startled at her friend's vehemence.
"Well, of course, you know, Mona," she said hesitatingly, "it was a great disappointment to me."
"My failure? Naturally. I did not find it exactly amusing myself."
"I don't mean that. I do not care a straw about the failure, except in so far as it delays the moment when you can begin to practise. That was the fortune of war. But I do think you are doing a very wrong thing now."
"In what way?"