Free Howards End by E. M. Forster

to think about. She made a false start with the Wilcoxes, and she’ll be as willing as we are to have nothing more to do with them."
    "For a clever girl, dear, how very oddly you do talk. Helen’ll HAVE to have something more to do with them, now that they 're all opposite. She may meet that Paul in the street. She cannot very well not bow."
    "Of course she must bow. But look here; let’s do the flowers. I was going to say, the will to be interested in him has died, and what else matters? I look on that disastrous episode (over which you were so kind) as the killing of a nerve in Helen. It’s dead, and she’ll never be troubled with it again. The only things that matter are the things that interest one. Bowing, even calling and leaving cards, even a dinner–party—we can do all those things to the Wilcoxes, if they find it agreeable; but the other thing, the one important thing—never again. Don’t you see?"
    Mrs. Munt did not see, and indeed Margaret was making a most questionable statement—that any emotion, any interest once vividly aroused, can wholly die.
    "I also have the honour to inform you that the Wilcoxes are bored with us. I didn’t tell you at the time—it might have made you angry, and you had enough to worry you—but I wrote a letter to Mrs. W, and apologised for the trouble that Helen had given them. She didn’t answer it."
    "How very rude!"
    "I wonder. Or was it sensible?"
    "No, Margaret, most rude."
    "In either case one can class it as reassuring."
    Mrs. Munt sighed. She was going back to Swanage on the morrow, just as her nieces were wanting her most. Other regrets crowded upon her: for instance, how magnificently she would have cut Charles if she had met him face to face. She had already seen him, giving an order to the porter—and very common he looked in a tall hat. But unfortunately his back was turned to her, and though she had cut his back, she could not regard this as a telling snub.
    "But you will be careful, won’t you?" she exhorted.
    "Oh, certainly. Fiendishly careful."
    "And Helen must be careful, too."
    "Careful over what?" cried Helen, at that moment coming into the room with her cousin.
    "Nothing" said Margaret, seized with a momentary awkwardness.
    "Careful over what, Aunt Juley?"
    Mrs. Munt assumed a cryptic air. "It is only that a certain family, whom we know by name but do not mention, as you said yourself last night after the concert, have taken the flat opposite from the Mathesons—where the plants are in the balcony."
    Helen began some laughing reply, and then disconcerted them all by blushing. Mrs. Munt was so disconcerted that she exclaimed, "What, Helen, you don’t mind them coming, do you?" and deepened the blush to crimson.
    "Of course I don’t mind," said Helen a little crossly. "It is that you and Meg are both so absurdly grave about it, when there’s nothing to be grave about at all."
    "I’m not grave," protested Margaret, a little cross in her turn.
    "Well, you look grave; doesn’t she, Frieda?"
    "I don’t feel grave, that’s all I can say; you’re going quite on the wrong tack."
    "No, she does not feel grave," echoed Mrs. Munt. "I can bear witness to that. She disagrees—"
    "Hark!" interrupted Fraulein Mosebach. "I hear Bruno entering the hall."
    For Herr Liesecke was due at Wickham Place to call for the two younger girls. He was not entering the hall—in fact, he did not enter it for quite five minutes. But Frieda detected a delicate situation, and said that she and Helen had much better wait for Bruno down below, and leave Margaret and Mrs. Munt to finish arranging the flowers. Helen acquiesced. But, as if to prove that the situation was not delicate really, she stopped in the doorway and said:
    "Did you say the Mathesons' flat, Aunt Juley? How wonderful you are! I never knew that the name of the woman who laced too tightly was Matheson."
    "Come, Helen," said her cousin.
    "Go, Helen," said her aunt; and continued to Margaret almost in the same