It was past midnight and I felt overpoweringly tired. My beautiful rival opened the front door to me and I followed her silently up to her bedroom. She took off my opera-cloak and we sat down facing each other. The room was large and dark but for a row of candles on the mantel-piece and two high church-lights each side of a silver pier-glass. There was a table near my chair with odds and ends on it and a general smell of scent and flowers. I looked at her in her blue satin nightgown and saw that she had been crying.
"It is kind of you to have come," she said, "and I daresay you know why I wanted to see you to-night."
MARGOT: "No, I don't; I haven't the faintest idea!"
THE LADY (LOOKING RATHER EMBARRASSED, BUT AFTER A MOMENT'S PAUSE):
"I want you to tell me about yourself."
I felt this to be a wrong entry: she had sent for me to tell her about Peter Flower and not myself; but why should I tell her about either of us? I had never spoken of my love-affairs excepting to my mother and my three friends—Con Manners, Frances Horner, and Etty Desborough—and people had ceased speaking to me about them; why should I sit up with a stranger and discuss myself at this time of night? I said there was nothing to tell. She answered by saying she had met so many people who cared for me that she felt she almost knew me, to which I replied:
"In that case, why talk about me?"
THE LADY: "But some people care for both of us."
MARGOT (RATHER COLDLY): "I daresay."
THE LADY: "Don't be hard, I want to know if you love Peter Flower
. … Do you intend to marry him?"
The question had come then: this terrible question which my mother had never asked and which I had always evaded! Had it got to be answered now … and to a stranger?