If she had looked into Strange’s den half an hour later she might have got some idea of how much he minded, but he ate a good dinner and afterwards tied flies with a steady hand, and made several quite decent jokes as he watched her standing at the open window, looking with careless interest at his work. She wore a Watteau gown of pale primrose, with purple pansies scattered here and there over it; she held a great yellow fan in her hand and stood bathed in the yellow twilight. “If I boxed her ears,” he thought, “I wonder what she would do or say? Any way it couldn’t hurt her more than those devilish experiments of hers hurt me. I have a good mind to try—if her ears weren’t altogether so perfect I swear I would. Ah, my good girl, you are playing with fire!” He paused to fix a wren’s tail feather in its place. “There may come a time, little fool, when I may get tired of this game and resort to active measures, and then you’ll find your bit of hell, “‘Dann willst du weine, du liebe kleine!’” In a moment of abstraction he sang it aloud, and gave Gwen a considerable start. “Do you ever sew, Gwen?” “No, but I can, I believe, in a fashion.” “I wish you would then, it might make you look a bit human.” “Good gracious! I am not divine again, am I? I thought I had shut all that away with my white tea-gown. Perhaps you would like to call Tolly?” “Oh, dear, no! You would not conduce to his soul’s salvation in the least. On the contrary, I was thinking you had a marked resemblance to Lilith.” “Oh, Lilith! I am flattered certainly. I think I will go and get some work.” Strange laughed, and went on tying feathers on hooks. “Ha, that touched her up!” he muttered. When she was half up the stairs she stopped and stamped: “How dare he say—say with a laugh what I won’t even dare to think!” However, she was soon back again in her yellow twilight, but sitting this time, and with a big bundle of coarse flannel in her hand that she began to stitch with demure diligence. “What in the name of fortune is that!” said Strange, after taking steady stock of it. “I don’t really know, I got it in Eliza’s room—I think it is a jelly-bag, it’s just like one I once made for Mrs. Fellowes, and spoiled disgracefully. I sewed up the wrong end!” Strange investigated it with much interest. “My good girl,” he said at last, “do you know what you are doing? You are sewing an old woman’s petticoat.” He gave a laugh that reached Tolly, as he sat varnishing boots downstairs. “Bless ’em, the pair of ’em,” he remarked, “and as ’appy together as if they lived in four rooms! Queer, too! as the aristocracy’s mostly gone to the dogs in the domestic line!” CHAPTER XXXII. “I WONDER whether the fellow is grasping the ‘high seriousness’ of Art, or going to the devil!” Strange was on his road to see Brydon, from whom that morning he had received a rather enigmatical note.