"There's no need for you to be sarcastic; you must admit I'm right about Lily."
Sylvia suddenly produced an eye-glass and, fixing it in her eye, stared mockingly at Dorothy.
"No, but I might compare David with Tom," she said, letting the eye-glass drop in a way that Dorothy found extremely irritating.
After their host's remarks about the tenor Dorothy felt she could not argue the point farther, and now in addition to her anger against Lily she began to hate her singing-master. However, Sylvia must have felt that she was right and have spoken to Lily, because the following week at Leicester Lily, with most unwonted energy, attacked her on the subject:
"I don't know why you should grumble to Sylvia about me. I don't grumble to her about you. When have I ever grumbled about your practising? You say the only reason you let yourself get talked about with David Bligh is because he's useful to you. You say he's helping you with your voice. Well, Tom helps me with my bag. What's the difference? It's only since you were asked out by those men who had a car that you suddenly discovered how impossible Tom was and began laughing at his waistcoats. I didn't laugh at Cyril Vavasour's waistcoat, which was more extraordinary than Tom's."
"I've never grumbled about Tom's carrying your bag," Dorothy explained, patiently. "What I said to Sylvia was that I didn't think you ought to let him kiss you. I don't think it's dignified."
"Well, as long as he doesn't want to kiss you, I don't see what you've got to complain about."
The bare notion of Tom's wanting to kiss her was so unpleasant to Dorothy that she had to withdraw from the conversation. Thenceforth the breach between her and Lily began to widen; in fact, if it had not been for Sylvia she would have told Lily that she could not share rooms with her any longer. She was afraid, however, that Sylvia might be so sorry for Lily that she would find herself left alone, which would put her in an undignified position, because the other girls might say that it was because she wanted to carry on, as they would vulgarly express it, with Bligh; besides, living alone was too expensive.
Since Nottingham, Dorothy had been criticizing the tenor almost as sharply as she criticized Tom Hewitt, and she was in no mood to encourage the idea that there was anything between him and her; all her lessons now were merely repetitions of what he had taught her already, and it became obvious to Dorothy that he was what he was in the profession simply because he was not good enough to be anything better. He had so often bragged to her about his success with other girls that he deserved to suffer on her account, and she felt quite like Nemesis when soon after this, while they were walking in the town of Leicester, she told him that this was to be their last walk together.