Nor had Mr. Strong himself been able to help her very much when, a couple of days before, she had put the question to him, earnestly and without hateful false shame.
“What is this relation of ours?” she had asked him, point-blank and fearlessly.
“Eh?” Mr. Strong had replied, a little startled.
“There must be a relation of some sort between every two people who come into contact. I’m just wondering exactly what ours is.”
Then Mr. Strong had knitted his brows and had said, presently, “I see.... Have you read ‘The Tragic Comedians?’”—Amory had not, and the copy of the book which she had immediately ordered had not come yet. And then she too had knitted her brows. She had caught the trick from him.
“I suppose that what it really comes to is knowing yourself,” she had mused; and at that Mr. Strong had given her a quick approving look, almost as if he said that if she put in her thumb in the same place again she might pull out a plum very well worth having.
“And not,” Amory had continued, curiously heartened, “anything about the other person at all.”
“Good, good,” Mr. Strong had applauded under his breath; “have you Edward Carpenter’s book in the house, by the way?... Never mind: I’ll send you my copy.”
He had sent it. It was in Amory’s hand now. She had discovered that it had a catching and not easily identifiable smell of its own, of Virginia cigarettes and damp and she knew not what else, all mingled; and somehow the smell seemed quite as much an answer to the question she had asked as anything in the book itself.
Nor, despite Walter’s special knowledge of these indications, could she go to the Wyrons for diagnosis and advice. For one thing, there was her own position of high patronage to be considered; for another, splendidly daring as the Wyrons’ original protest had been, the Lectures had lately begun to have a little the air of a shop, over the counter of which admittedly valuable specifics were handed, but with a kind of “And the next article, please?” suspicion about it. Besides, the Wyrons, having no children, had of necessity to “chic” a little in cases where children formed a complicating element. Besides ... but anyway, Amory wasn’t going either to Laura Beamish or to Walter Wyron.