Indeed this divination seemed to her a most striking proof of Miss Verinder’s power of sympathy; her own instinct had been correct; she was glad she had come here. She went on impulsively and confidently; telling Miss Verinder how she had half mooted the subject of her troubles to two comfortable matrons, but in each case she had felt rebuffed and had immediately “curled up,” feeling certain that neither would give her any help, but rather take the side of her family against her. Then she had made up her mind to tell Miss Verinder all about it.

“I knew you’d help me if you could, dear Miss Verinder. You have been so nice to me ever since we first met—and, I know it sounds conceited, but I felt you did really like me.”

“I do like you very much,” said Miss Verinder simply and affectionately; and she stretched out her hand and gave a little squeeze to one of Mildred’s soft warm paws. Then she folded her hands on her lap again.

“Thank you so much. I think you’re just an angel, Miss Verinder.”

“Why always Miss Verinder? Why don’t you call me Emmeline?”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” said Mildred, flattered but overwhelmed by this surprising invitation. “It would seem such awful cheek.”

“Am I so venerable and forbidding?” asked Miss Verinder, with mild reproach.

“Of course not,” said Mildred eagerly. “No, I shall be delighted, if you’ll really let me. I think it’s absolutely sweet of you—Emmeline. Well now, Emmeline,”—and Mildred repeated the name firmly, as if feeling great satisfaction in using this unceremonious form of address;—“The fact is, Emmeline—”

And with a voluble flood she narrated how she had fallen deeply and perhaps even foolishly in love with a young man; how Mr. and Mrs. Parker had made a monstrous absurd fuss about it; and how, because of it, the once comfortable home in Ennismore Gardens was swept with tempest, wrath, and pain.

“You understand, Emmeline? I mean to say, they really are behaving like people who have been bitten by a mad dog. In one way, I mean to say—you know—it’s all too ridiculous for words. The things they say! The things, don’t you know, they threaten to do. Well, I mean to say—”

Mildred’s eyes were flashing, she pulled her gloves from hand to hand, and, prattling on, became so involved with mean-to-says and don’t-you-knows that she floundered suddenly to silence.

“Emmeline,” and she changed her position on the sofa, “I think I’d better start at the very beginning.”

“That is always a good place to start at,” said Miss Verinder, smiling sympathetically.

“Then what I want you to understand is that I’m very much in earnest. It’s no silliness—or infatuation, as mother says—or any rot of that sort. It’s the real thing.” As she said this Mildred’s pretty commonplace little face became all soft and tender, her lips quivered, and in spite of her modernity she had the aspect of a quite small child who will burst into tears if you speak harshly to it. “You must understand,” and she suddenly turned her head away, “I wasn’t even thinking of love—much less hunting for it. It came upon me like a thunderclap.”

“Like a thunderclap!” Miss Verinder echoed the words, and drew in her breath, making the sound of a faint sigh. “Go on, Mildred dear.”

“Well then,” and Mildred looked round again, with a child-like air of triumph. “I would have you to know also that the man I’ve fallen in love with is very famous.”

Miss Verinder started and looked at her intently.

“But it’s nothing to do with his fame that has made me love him.”

Again Miss Verinder started, slightly.

“Of course I don’t mean to say that I wasn’t influenced by all that. You know what I mean? Seeing his photographs in the papers! Hearing what other girls said about him. And I own that I admired him before I knew him, but it was for himself and nothing else that I fell in love with him directly I did get to know him. The fact that he was celebrated and a favourite of the public was nothing then.”

And, now fairly started, Mildred opened her heart as she had never done before. She told Miss Verinder all she felt of the torturing bliss and exquisite pain that honest straightforward young girls suffer when this most potent of fevers catches them without warning, like a thunderclap. The tale of Mildred’s frenzied longings and cravings and hopes and fears brought faint old-maidish blushes to the smooth ivory of Miss Verinder’s cheeks. It was as though Mildred, like a small house on fire, had lit up a faint reflection in the far distance of a tranquil evening sky.

“There,” said Mildred, ceasing to flash and becoming quite calm. “Oh, Emmeline, that has done me good—even if you can’t help me. You know what I mean? Just to get it off one’s chest for once.” And then she laughed in a deprecating manner. “But I’m afraid I’m shocking you most frightfully.”

“No, my dear,” said Miss Verinder, “you are not shocking me in the least.”

“You are so kind. Well then, now you do see I’m in earnest, and how ridiculous it is for one’s people—”

“Yes. But who is he, Mildred? You haven’t told me yet.”

“Alwyn Beckett,” said Mildred looking confident and triumphant.

But great as was Miss Verinder’s sympathy, she could not make her face show any signs of intelligent recognition. She reminded Mildred that she lived very much out of the world. It would naturally appear ignorant and stupid, but she felt forced again to ask the question: Who is he?

“The actor,” said Mildred.

“Oh, yes,” said Miss Verinder. “You must not be surprised if I don’t know him by reputation, because I never go to the play, and am quite out of touch with theatrical people”; and she paused, smiling as if involuntarily amused by some secret thought. “The utmost I do in that direction is occasionally to go to one of these cinema theatres.”

“Oh, but he is on the films too,” said Mildred proudly.

“In what piece is he acting at the present time?”

“He is understudying the two big parts in Five Old Men and a Dog.”

“Ah, yes?”

Then Mildred burst forth about her family. “Of course I know they can’t keep us apart. Of course they’ve no right to interfere with me. But it isn’t exactly that. Good gracious, no, this is 1920, not 1820. Of course they can do what they’re doing now—I mean to say, just making hell for me at home. It’s irritating, but I must put up with it. Only I simply can’t stand their attitude to Alwyn”; and Mildred grew warm. “What are they, I’d like to know—to look down upon the stage!”

Miss Verinder said that the notion of treating the stage with contempt did certainly sound rather old-fashioned nowadays.

“Old-fashioned! I should think so. Even if they were anybody—which they aren’t. Do you know what my grandfather was? No. Well, I don’t myself. Father’s been jolly careful to prevent us knowing; but I know this—he wasn’t a gentleman. I mean, he hadn’t the smallest pretensions to being one. It was up in the north, and I believe he was just a person in a shop; you know, not owning the shop, but serving behind the counter—and he married grannie for her money. She wasn’t anything either. The elderly ugly daughter of some manufacturing people. But by a fluke of luck her share in the business somehow turned up trumps, so that while father was still a boy they were rich, and able to send him to Rugby and Cambridge. Then, when grandfather died, he and mother came to London, and bought the house in Ennismore