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what a good thing it was the
    niece hadn't come or there would have been two of them talking about
    this paragon, her achievements, her wealth, her lovely home, and her
    devotion to her parents. As it was, her day was spoiled. She should have
    been alone, to think about Stephen, to remember--and perhaps to plan?
    Olive was wearing a trouser suit in bright emerald green and a lot of
    mock-gold jewelry. Kitsch, Gwendolen called it to herself. Olive was too
    fat and too old to wear trousers or anything in that color. She was proud
    of her long fingernails and had lacquered them the same scarlet as her
    lipstick. Gwendolen stared at lips and nails with the critical and mocking
    eye of a young girl. She often wondered why she had friends when she
    rather disliked them and didn't want their company.
    "When my great-niece was fourteen she was already five feet ten inches
    tall," said Olive. "My husband was alive then. 'If you grow any more,' he
    said to her, 'you'll never find a boyfriend.The boys won't go out with a girl
    taller than them.' And what do you think happened? When she was
    seventeen and over six feet she met this stockbroker. He'd wanted to be
    an actor but they wouldn't have him because he was six feet six, far too
    tall for the theater, so he went into stockbroking and made a packet. The
    two of them were quite an item. He wanted to marry her but she had her
    career to think of."
    "How interesting," said Gwendolen, thinking of Dr. Reeves who had
    once said she was a nice girl and he was awfully fond of her.
    "Girls don't have to get married these days like we did." She seemed to
    have forgotten Gwendolen's single status and went on blithely, "They
    don't feel they're left on the shelf. There's no status to marriage anymore.
    I know it's a bold thing to say but if I was young again, I wouldn't get
    married. Would you?"
    "I never did," said Gwendolen austerely.
    "No, that's true," Olive said as if Gwendolen might have been in some
    doubt about it. "Maybe you did the right thing all along."
    But I would have married Stephen Reeves if he'd asked me, Gwendolen
    thought after Olive had gone and she was clearing up the tea things. We
    would have been happy, I would have made him happy, and I'd have got
    away from Papa. But he had never asked her. Once he had said he was
    fond of her, Papa seemed to have made a point of being there, though he
    could not have overheard. When her mother was dead Stephen signed
    the death certificate and said that if they wanted Mrs. Chawcer cremated
    they would need a second doctor's signature, so he'd ask his partner to
    come round.
    He didn't say he'd enjoyed all those teas they'd had together or that he'd
    miss them or her. Therefore she knew he'd comeback. Probably there
    was some rule in medical etiquette that forbade a general practitioner
    asking the relatives of a patient to go out with him. He was planning on
    coming back, waiting till after the funeral. Or perhaps he meant to come
    to the funeral. Gwendolen went through several series of agony because
    she had omitted to ask him to the funeral. That too might be in the
    medical etiquette rule book. She couldn't ask her father. They were both
    supposed to be grieving too much to ask each other anything like that.
    Dr. Reeves didn't come to the funeral. It was at St. Mark's, and apart
    from Gwendolen and her father, only three other people were there: an
    old cousin of Mrs. Chawcer's, their current maid, who came because she
    was religious, and the old man next door in St. Blaise Avenue. Since he
    hadn't been at thefuneral, Gwendolen was sure Stephen Reeves would
    just turn up at the house one day. He was leaving it for a little while
    outof respect for the dead and the mourners. During that week she spent
    more time, trouble, and money on her appearance than she had ever
    done before or since. She had her hair cut and set, she bought two new
    dresses, one gray and one dark blue, she experimented with makeup.
    Everyone else piled it on,