“Eirene, you are the very meanest——” began Zoe.
“Look here,” said Maurice hastily, “you’re both tired out, aren’t you? I was sure the march was too much for you. Let us all meditate if you think it’ll be restful. Or what do you think of turning in at once?”
“No,” said Eirene, “it is not that we are tired, it is that we are both cross. I was cross because Zoe always seems to think that if she has described a thing in suitable language it is all right—and besides, she said I had no object in life. Why were you cross, Zoe?”
“I don’t know—and,” added Zoe with emphasis, “I never knew that telling people they were cross made them less so.”
“But it’s part of Eirene’s system,” said Maurice. “Don’t you remember how we discussed it with Wylie quite a long time ago—her view that you ought never to mask disagreeable facts for the sake of other people’s feelings?”
“And you were all against me!” sighed Eirene. Later on, when she and Zoe had rolled themselves up in their rugs for the night, she recurred to the question.
“Zoe, why were you so angry? You could hardly speak. Did I say anything very dreadful?”
Zoe turned upon her with flashing eyes. “A girl who will tell a man what another girl said to her in private isn’t worthy the name of girl,” she said tersely.
“But Maurice! I never thought——”
“Maurice is a man, and men don’t understand. You seem to have had something left out of your composition, Eirene. You ought to know that sort of thing without thinking.”