“It isn’t me,” said Myra.
“What is it, then?”
“A woman wants a man to look after,” said Myra in her unimpassioned way. “If she can’t get a man she wants a woman. I’ve got you, so I’m not irritated. You haven’t got either, so you are.”
Olivia flushed angrily and swerved round in her chair before the mirror on her toilet-table—Myra was drying her hair—as she had dried it from days before Olivia could remember.
“That’s a liberty, Myra, which you oughtn’t to have taken.”
“I dare say, dearie,” replied Myra unmoved, “but it’s good for you that somebody now and then should tell you the truth.”
“I want neither man nor woman,” Olivia declared. Myra gently squared her mistress’s shoulders to the mirror and went on with her task.
“I wonder,” she said.
“I think you’re hateful,” said Olivia.
“Maybe. But I’ve got common-sense. If you think you’re going to London to stand for Parliament or write poetry and get it printed or run a Home for Incurable Camels, you’re mistaken, dear. And you’ll have no truck with women. You’ve never had a woman friend in the world—anyone you’d die for.”