"My poor child" (it was the young girl who spoke), "you don't know what you want; but you want something more than that."
Durant rattled his color-box in desperation, but the women were too much absorbed to heed his warning, and Frida even raised her voice in answering:
"Yes, I'm afraid I do want something more. I know what you're thinking, Georgie. When women of my age go on like this it generally means that they're in love, or that they want to be married, or both."
Durant was considering the propriety of bursting out on them noisily from the cover of his umbrella, but before he could decide the point Miss Tancred had continued:
"I am not in love."
She spoke in the tone of one stating an extremely uninteresting fact.
"You are in love, Frida. You're in love with life, and life won't have anything to do with you; it's thrown you over, and a beastly shame, too! You're simply dying for love of it, my sweetheart."
Frida did not deny the accusation. They passed on, and in the silence Durant could hear their skirts as they brushed the thorn bush. He could only pray now that he might remain invisible.
He felt rather than saw that they turned their heads in passing.
"Do you think he heard?"