Perhaps we shall meet again.«

By h. E. Bates

It was no use, no use any longer. She must begin to eat less, much less; starve herself, cut out ¹ everything. It could not go on like this: public dinner after public dinner, company luncheons' ² lavish food, eating till she could not breathe, eating for the sake of eating. She must be firm, put a stop to it, now, at once, before the summer got too hot, before Victor got to be the director of any more companies. Two hundred and thirteen pounds.⁸ She saw the hands of the bath­room weight-clock revolve ⁴ again in imagination, and rest at that awful figure. She felt like weeping.⁶ It was something terrible. No woman could bear it. And so she made up her mind. She was going to starve herself, and see what that would do.

She bounced and dumped ⁶ along the edge of the lake, in the park, like a distended silk balloon, her feet still quite neat,⁷ her ankles bony, so that it appeared as if she wore false legs.

On the edge of the lake, small children were crumbling bread ⁸ and buns for the ducks. Mrs. Victor was revolted. Food, always food, eating, didn't the world do anything else? Gulls planed over and clawed the air, to swoop down and up and snatch the thrown bread before it reached the water. She bumped and panted past, out of range of gulte and chil­dren * and the revolting sight of bread thrown and snatched.

She sat down on one of the green public seats. There was another thing. Now it had got so that she couldn't sit on one of the two penny chairs. ¹⁰ They were made only, it seemed, for normal people, the slim and elegant. She remembered the days when she had been slim and elegant. Like the young woman on the seat. Just like her. Scarcely enough flesh, if anything. "Mrs. Victor looked at the young woman who, in turn, was staring across the water: blonde, young, with shadow- pointed cheeks and a small scarlet buttonhole mouth closed tight up. Mrs. Victor, looking to see if she had any stockings on at all, saw the points of stitched ladders ¹² where the legs crossed. Stockings meant she had some sort of belt on. Well, that was just for decency. She didn't need support. It was a figure that had stepped straight out of advertisements.

Mrs. Victor looked down at her own thighs, like two vast sausages, and felt like weeping. She could not bear it, and looked back at the girl.

Ask her if she diets. Somehow she looks as if she diets. That sort of thinness can't be natural. There's thinness and thinness. ¹³ Somehow she looks as if she must diet.

Mrs. Victor hesitated to speak. Than she looked again at the girl. You could have blown her away with a breath. She had the ethereal lightness you saw spoken of in advertise­ments.

More children had appeared on the lake-edge, with more bread. Mrs. Victor said:

"Excuse me. I've been looking at your figure, and won­dering —"

"Eh?" The girl, startled, turned her extraordinarily thin face. "I'm sorry, I can't hear for the birds." ¹⁴

For a moment the birds quietened. Mrs. Victor said:

"I hope you'll excuse my speaking to you. I've been looking at your figure. Wondering if you did anything special for it. If you dieted. You see how I am."

"No," the girl said. "I don't do anything special."

"Oh!"

Mrs. Victor, not knowing how to go on, smiled. The girl's profile looked as though it had been pared down, ¹⁵ by a knife.

"I've got so desperate now," she said, "that I'm thinking of seriously starving." It did not sound right. "Starving se­riously," she said.