“I must rest!” she cried, “I must not think any more. I will have some more of that draught, it makes thinking a pulpy sweet sort of muddle, it takes all the keen edges off truth. If I did right,” she went on throwing her arms back, “I would go out on a crusade to girls and tell them all the truth, then, let them sin in knowledge not in ignorance, let them know that love, perfect love, is the only sanctification of marriage! Churches and rings are a mere farce.” She had come to the last shred of her strength; she crept into bed, and rang for her draught. CHAPTER XXXVI. A FEW days after, she was quite well enough to get up, the doctor told her to do so in the morning, but after looking out into the day she lay down again. She was not quite ready for life yet; here, in her bed, she was more or less aloof from it, but after a few hours restless thinking, getting up, and lunch, came to be a distinct relief. Directly after lunch she went out for a drive, and when she returned, and had got into her tea-gown, she went down to her boudoir and threw herself on the sofa with a weary little laugh. “Why can’t I rest or sew? why won’t my body get as tired as my brain? I could move a hundredweight this minute.” She got up and moved, with hardly any exertion, a great cabinet that would have tried the strength of a fair-sized man. “Humphrey declared I couldn’t,” she said, laughing again. “Gru! I can’t sit here and think. I wonder where is Humphrey—I believe I should like to ride a race, or to spend an hour on a switchback railway!” She went down and wandered from room to room with her long strong movements, every one of them the very incarnation of healthy grace. At last she found herself at the door of Strange’s den. With a sudden wilful impulse she opened the door and went in. Every window was open, and the soft cool air was playing high jinks among the curtains. Strange had brought his collection of odds and ends from his chambers, and had scattered them through the big alcoved room in a sort of orderly disorder. The floor was stained and spread with an amazing collection of skins. In his divings into studios he had learnt the comfort and use of screens; there were several in the room, kept well out of the way of knees and shoulders. Thanks to the draught the cigar smoke had lost its heaviness, and was floating as a sort of spiritual essence through the textures. For some minutes after Gwen came in she could hardly discern it at all, when she did she wished she could transport it to her part of the house, it struck her as being a purer scent than one gets in women’s rooms. “How hospitable those chairs look!” she said, feeling one. “Does he lose all his right hand gloves, I wonder! Do all men? As a matter of fact I know amazingly little of men or of their ways! This is a clean, self-respecting room, I like it, I wonder I never took any notice of it before! Ah, another screen!”