“You think an awful lot about truth, don’t you, Judy?”

“Yes, I do, though I suppose if you knew all about me you’d think it very inconsistent.  Of course I don’t mean just ‘telling the truth,’ as children say, but the actual worship of truth in our relations with each other and ourselves.  But it’s not a counsel of worldly wisdom, so don’t pay any attention to me.”

“But I want to.  I admire you ever so,” said Georgie girlishly.  “I know that I’m an awful little beast in all sorts of ways, but I would love to be like you if I could.”

“Heaven forbid!” ejaculated Judy.

“Well, as much as would suit my style,” laughed Georgie.  “But tell me, Judy, what sort of thing d’you call being badly untruthful—­the sort that matters?  I’ll tell you the sort of thing I do, and I can’t help myself.  I hate myself, but I can’t stop.  You know just before I got engaged to Val?”

“Yes?”

“Well, we were at that house on the river, and Val came down for the day, and mother knew we were going to get engaged, I suppose; anyway, she didn’t make the usual fuss about being alone, and we went out in the punt and took lunch to a backwater.  I didn’t even really think he cared for me that kind of way; I was only wondering.  I’d been washing my hair when he arrived, and it wasn’t quite dry.  This was before I cut it off, you know.  And so—­I thought I’d take it down and finish drying it....”

“Go on.  I’ve done that myself,” murmured Judith dryly.

“Well, I was sitting a little in front of him on the bank and a little bit of my hair blew in his face.  I manoeuvred so that it should.  Beast that I am!  And later, when I was doing it up again, he handed me the pins and said, ‘Ripping stuff it is, Georgie!’ It was the first day he called me Georgie, and you can’t think how often he did it.  Why do men always call hair ‘stuff,’ I wonder?  Well—­oh, where was I?  Oh, I know.  And then he added, ‘It was blowing across my face just now.’  And I said, ‘Oh, was it?  I hope it didn’t tickle.  Why on earth didn’t you tell me?’ And he said, ‘I loved it’ in a funny sort of fat voice.  As though I hadn’t known, and hadn’t planned for just that....  I think that’s the sort of thing that makes me hate myself, and yet I can’t help it.”

Judith lay silent.  She was too used to playing every move in her power with full knowledge of the effect to blame this child for tampering with forces which she was blandly innocent of understanding.

“I don’t think that ‘mattered,’ as you call it,” she said at length.  “After all, you’re honest with yourself, that’s the chief thing.  I admit if you go on being dishonest with others in time it has a deadly tendency to react on yourself and blur your vision, as it did with Blanche, but then she was crooked anyway.  I shouldn’t worry about myself if I were you, Georgie!”

“Well, it deceived Val, I suppose,” remarked Georgie.

“Not about anything vital.  He loved you already, and you were to find you loved him.  Besides ... with men ... it’s not quite the same thing....”