Page:The strange experiences of Tina Malone.djvu/32

32 me wonder if I had been used as a "blind." I knew she had done this often with me in the past when she wanted me to play gooseberry or play propriety. But she had always wanted me to meet her friends and had wanted them to meet me, and as hers and my tastes were both Bohemian, I was only too willing to fall in with her wishes. But I felt now that the White Priestess had completely got her under sway.

So I was left out.

I made one or two little attempts to make up but it was useless.

It was dreary living there and feeling that I was not wanted by anyone. The cold ways of the Occult School which professed to "love all the world," and yet pulled their skirts aside from an individual worked me up to a feeling of abhorrence. I knew it was not natural to Naomi to feel like this. I longed for her companionship.

One day, obeying an impulse, I wrote another letter to her and left it on her milk can so that she should get it the first thing in the morning.

Feeling that it must somehow bring things right I went down to the drying-ground later on, and waited for her to come out.

I was conscious of her on the verandah behind me and I turned with a smile.

But to my surprise I saw her fierce and haughty.

"Tina Malone! how dare you write me such a letter?"

I could hardly get my breath.

"How dare you write me such a letter? You will send me a written apology for it."

"A writenwritten [sic] apology! What for," I asked.

"For daring to write to me as you did."

"What on earth have I said that was dreadful?" I asked, puzzled and mentally rehearsing the letter.

"You said things that no sane woman would have thought," she said.

I ran my mind through the letter again and caught at the words she might have objected to.

"I said it was unhealthy here the way you all take objection to simple things because you think itsit's [sic] wrong for me to care for you, and that I felt I must go if you did not change," I said. "But I never thought you really thought that way yourself—it is only because Diana thinks it and has influenced you."

"You'll send me a written apology or you do not enter my flat again," she repeated.

"I'll do nothing of the kind," I said. "I meant all I said and I'll stand to it in open court if needed. I never meant it for you. You don't believe in those things really."

"But you meant it for my friends."