“Yes, Mrs. Spence,” the little man beside her was saying, “a man like myself, however diffident, must be ready to do his full duty by the community in which he lives.  That is why I feel I must accept the nomination for mayor of this town—­if I am offered it.  My friends say to me, ’Miller, you are a man, and we need a man.  Bainbridge needs a man.’  What am I to do under such circumstances?  If there is no man—­”

“You might try a woman,” said Desire, suddenly losing patience.  The garden party was stupid.  The egotist was stupid.  She was probably stupid too, because she knew that a few weeks ago she would have found both the party and the egotist entertaining.  She would have been delighted to peep in at a window where every-thing was labelled “Big I.”  She would have enjoyed Mrs. Burton-Jones’ windows immensely—­but now, windows bored her.  In the only window that mattered the blinds were down.  Desire’s life had narrowed as it broadened.  It wasn’t life that she wanted any more—­it was the one thing which could have made life dear.

A great impatience of trivialities came upon her.  She hardly heard the injured tones of the little man who had embarked upon a heated repudiation of a feminine mayoralty.  It did not amuse her even when he proved logically that women could never be anything because they were always something else.  Instead she looked to Dr. John for rescue, and Dr. John, most observant of knights, immediately rescued her.

“Did you see that?” asked Mrs. Keene (the same who discovered the Bolshevik principal).  She touched Miss Davis significantly on the arm.

Mary, who had seen perfectly well, looked blank.

“Of course you are not one of us,” went on Mrs. Keene.  “So you can scarcely be expected. . . .  Still, living in the same house . . . and knowing the dear professor so well.”

“Did you wish to speak to him?  He has gone home, I think,” said Mary, innocently.  “I fancy he doesn’t suffer garden parties gladly.”

“No—­such a pity!  With a wife so young and, if I may say so, so different.  One feels that she has not been brought up amongst us.  So sad.  I always say ‘Let our young men marry at home.’  So sensible.  One knows where one is then, don’t you think?”

Mary agreed that, in such a position, one might know where one was.

“And book writing,” said Mrs. Keene, “so fatiguing!  So liable to occupy one’s attention—­to the exclusion of other matters. . . .  The dear professor. . . .  So bound up in the marvels of the human brain!”

“Not brain, mind,” corrected Mary gently.  “The professor is a psychologist.”

“Well, of course if you wish to separate them, in a scriptural sense.  But what I mean is that such biological studies are dangerous.  So absorbing.  When one examines things through a microscope—­”

“One doesn’t—­in psychology.”

“Well, perhaps not so much as formerly, especially since vivisection is so looked down upon.  But it is terribly absorbing, as I say.  And one can hardly expect an absorbed man to see things.  And yet—­”