‘Marriage is her job at present,’ Mary replied for her.
‘Oh, I see,’ said Mr Basnett. He made allowances for that; he and his friends had faced the question of sex, along with all others, and assigned it an honourable place in their scheme of life. Katharine felt this beneath the roughness of his manner; and a world entrusted to the guardianship of Mary Datchet and Mr Basnett seemed to her a good world, although not a romantic or beautiful place or, to put it figuratively, a place where any line of blue mist softly linked tree to tree upon the horizon. For a moment she thought she saw in his face, bent now over the fire, the features of that original man whom we still recall every now and then, although we know only the clerk, barrister, Government official, or working-man variety of him. Not that Mr Basnett, giving his days to commerce and his spare time to social reform, would long carry about him any trace of his possibilities of completeness; but, for the moment, in his youth and ardour, still speculative, still uncramped, one might imagine him the citizen of a nobler state than ours. Katharine turned over her small stock of information, and wondered what their society might be going to attempt. Then she remembered that she was hindering their business, and rose, still thinking of this society, and thus thinking, she said to Mr Basnett:
‘Well, you’ll ask me to join when the time comes, I hope.’
He nodded, and took his pipe from his mouth, but, being unable to think of anything to say, he put it back again, although he would have been glad if she had stayed.
Against her wish, Mary insisted upon taking her downstairs, and then, as there was no cab to be seen, they stood in the street together, looking about them.
‘Go back,’ Katharine urged her, thinking of Mr Basnett with his papers in his hand.
‘You can’t wander about the streets alone in those clothes,’ said Mary, but the desire to find a cab was not her true reason for standing beside Katharine for a minute or two. Unfortunately for her composure, Mr Basnett and his papers seemed to her an incidental diversion of life’s serious purpose compared with some tremendous fact which manifested itself as she stood alone with Katharine. It may have been their common womanhood.
‘Have you seen Ralph?’ she asked suddenly, without preface.
‘Yes,’ said Katharine directly, but she did not remember when or where she had seen him. It took her a moment or two to remember why Mary should ask her if she had seen Ralph.
‘I believe I’m jealous,’ said Mary.
‘Nonsense, Mary,’ said Katharine, rather distractedly, taking her arm and beginning to walk up the street in the direction of the main road. ‘Let me see; we went to Kew, and we agreed to be friends. Yes, that’s what happened.’
Mary was silent, in the hope that Katharine would tell her more. But Katharine said nothing.
‘It’s not a question of friendship,’ Mary exclaimed, her anger rising, to her own surprise. ‘You know it’s not. How can it be? I’ve no right to interfere—’ She stopped. ‘Only I’d rather Ralph wasn’t hurt,’ she concluded.
‘I think he seems able to take care of himself,’ Katharine observed. Without either of them wishing it, a feeling of hostility had risen between them.
‘Do you really think it’s worth it?’ said Mary, after a pause.
‘How can one tell?’ Katharine asked.
‘Have you ever cared for any one?’ Mary demanded rashly and foolishly.
‘I can’t wander about London discussing my feelings—Here’s a cab—no, there’s some one in it.’
‘We don’t want to quarrel,’ said Mary.
‘Ought I to have told him that I wouldn’t be his friend?’ Katharine asked. ‘Shall I tell him that? If so, what reason shall I give him?’
‘Of course you can’t tell him that,’ said Mary, controlling herself.
‘I believe I shall, though,’ said Katharine suddenly.
‘I lost my temper, Katharine; I shouldn’t have said what I did.’
‘The whole thing’s foolish,’ said Katharine, peremptorily. ‘That’s what I say. It’s not worth it.’ She spoke with unnecessary vehemence, but it was not directed against Mary Datchet. Their animosity had completely disappeared, and upon both of them a cloud of difficulty and darkness rested, obscuring the future, in which they had both to find a way.
‘No, no, it’s not worth it,’ Katharine repeated. ‘Suppose, as you say, it’s out of the question—this friendship; he falls in love with me. I don’t want that. Still,’ she added, ‘I believe you exaggerate; love’s not everything; marriage itself is only one of the things-’ They had reached the main thoroughfare, and stood looking at the omnibuses and passers-by, who seemed, for the moment, to illustrate what Katharine had said of the diversity of human interests. For both of them it had become one of those moments of extreme detachment, when it seems unnecessary ever again to shoulder the burden of happiness and self-assertive existence. Their neighbours were welcome to their possessions.
‘I don’t lay down any rules,’ said Mary, recovering herself first, as they turned after a long pause of this description. All I say is that you should know what you’re about—for certain; but,’ she added, ‘I expect you do.’
At the same time she was profoundly perplexed, not only by what she knew of the arrangements for Katharine’s marriage, but by the impression which she had of her, there on her arm, dark and inscrutable.
They walked back again and reached the steps which led up to Mary’s flat. Here they stopped and paused for a moment, saying nothing.
‘You must go in,’ said Katharine, rousing herself. ‘He’s waiting all this time to go on with his reading.’ She glanced up at the lighted window near the top of the house, and they both looked at it and waited for a moment. A flight of semicircular steps ran up to the hall, and Mary slowly mounted the first two or three, and paused, looking down upon Katharine.
‘I think you underrate the value of that emotion,’ she said slowly, and a little awkwardly. She climbed another step and looked down once more upon the figure that was only partly lit up, standing in the street with a colourless
