When Gwen was coming down to tea in a wonderful gown of white velvet with slashes of crocus yellow, she met Tolly, now the valet’s young man, carrying off an armful of Strange’s wet clothes. By some sudden impulse she stopped and accosted him. “I hope you will be happy here,” she said, if the truth must be told, in rather a shy way, the experience was so new and shocking. “You must try to keep away from gin,” she added sagely, “and then you will be sure to get on well. I know your master wants you to.” Tolly gave a wild dab at his red mat of stubble, muttered inarticulately and fled. “Oh, what made me do it, what? That horror will haunt me for a week. What is Humphrey made of that he can endure the constant sight of him? And now I remember, Mrs. Fellowes told me one day, he nursed that awful thing for three weeks once, because it whimpered at the thought of a hospital. Imagine that mouth, that nose, that ghastly whole, in delirium, oh imagine the mere touch of those flabby paws with their great red knobs—those knobs fascinated me and, ugh! they have got into my eyes! Without doubt I have a remarkable man for a husband! I wish, oh, I wish I had my tea, I am dying for it, I think I must be tired.” She sank down into a big chair and put her feet out to catch the heat, then she put her hands up and set to to rub her eyes, in a foolish futile effort to clear her whirling brain, and then Strange and the tea came in. “I have seen Tolly,” she said, giving him some tea. “In that gown?” “Yes.” “Ah, that’s good, it may awaken some sense of religion in the beggar. I have experimented on him with every variety of church, and with a most mixed assortment of parsons, without the slightest effect, but there is a certain divinity about you in that gown that may appeal to the fellow—be the thin edge of the wedge, and lead to higher things. It would be a new _rôle_ for you to pose in, Gwen, as an instrument of grace.” “I think I should do better as an instrument of wrath,” she said, with rather a strained smile; she felt a sudden impulse of loathing against what Strange called her “divinity.” “It is one of the things which keeps me so remote, so absolutely aloof,” she thought hurriedly, “what do women want with divinity or any other superhuman attribute? I believe Rossetti must have thought of me for his ‘Lilith’.” She stood up half absently and looked into a mirror near at hand, then she moved away suddenly with sneering lips and a quick flush. “That’s not the fire!” her husband thought, “Oh Lord, what’s up now?” After a few minutes she went slowly over to the piano, and began to play in a vague fitful way. Her husband dropped the paper he had taken up, and listened. It struck him that her playing had altered, it used to be mechanical and rather expressionless, no one could accuse it of want of expression to-night, even if the expression did limit itself to anger and unrest.