But Robert Grimshaw was not asking what was the good of Christian Science. He had turned his back upon the front room. Nevertheless, every word that Pauline uttered had at once its hearing, its meaning, and its painful under-meaning in his ears. And when he had said, “What’s the good?” it had been merely the question of what was the good of Pauline’s going on with these terrible vigilances, this heart-breaking pretence. And through his dreadfully tired mind there went--and the vision carried with it a suggestion of sleep, of deep restfulness--the vision of the logical sequence of events. If they let Dudley Leicester down, if they no longer kept up the pretence--the pretence that Dudley Leicester was no more an engrossed politician--then Dudley Leicester would go out of things, and he and Pauline ... he and Pauline would fall together. For how long could Pauline keep it up? The cruelty of the situation--of each word that was uttered, as of each word that she uttered in return, the mere impish malignancy of accidental circumstances--all these things changed for the moment his very view of Society. And the people sitting behind him--Madame de Bogota, with the voluptuous eyes and the sneering lips; Mrs. Jimtort, whose lips curved and whose eyes were cold; Mr. Balestier, whose eyes rolled round and round, so that they appeared to be about to burst out of his head, and the deuce only knows what they didn’t see or what conclusions they wouldn’t draw from what they did see--these three seemed to be a small commission sent by Society to inquire into the state of a household where it was suspected something was “wrong.” He realized that it was probably only the state of his nerves; but every new word added to his conviction that these were not merely “people,” bland, smiling, idle, and innocuous--good people of social contacts. They were, he was convinced, Inquisitors, representing each a separate interest--Mrs. Jimtort standing for provincial Society, Madame de Bogota for all the cosmopolitanism of the world’s centre that Western London is, and Balestier for the Party. And outside there seemed to be--he seemed to hear them--the innumerable whispers of the tongues of all Society, canvassing the results of the report that would be brought back by this committee of inquiry. It worked up, indeed, to an utterly abominable climax when Balestier, with his rather strident voice, exclaimed: “Why don’t you let me mote you down to Well-lands one day, Mrs. Leicester? You ought to know the Hudsons. Lady Etta’s a peach, as I learned to say when I went over with the Newfoundland Commission.” And at that even Ellida threw up her hands and gazed, her lips parted, into Grimshaw’s eyes. From behind his back, a minute before, there had come little rustlings of people standing up. He had heard Pauline say: