still light fell on a small face. Never seemed anything so fast asleep as this form. As I stood watching it, it seemed to me that I could still hear the galloping of the dream horses, I felt like a thief. Geraldine was safe then; she knew nothing of that furious ride through the night, heard none of the galloping of those horses. As I turned from taking a last look at the sleeping face I felt awed, not exactly awed, but frightened. Do you know that perfect and absolute purity frightens one to look at, as if it were a ghost? You may laugh, but it does, though it is more rarely seen than any ghost. I have only seen it once, and that was when I saw this child asleep with the dawn on her face. When I had found my room again I drew up the window-blind and opened the window. The trees in the garden stood all dripping with dew in the grey light that came from the slate-coloured sky, and the chrysanthemums looked like the ghosts of chrysanthemums. Not a breath of wind. I looked up at the sky. Two crows were flying lazily in the distance, their black wings winking dreamily as they flew. Not a sound. CHAPTER XVII THE OLD OAK CHEST I woke at nine o'clock. Someone had knocked at my door. It was only the maid-servant with hot water. I had gone to sleep at six o'clock with the vision of that strange grey dawn in my head, and now at nine--I can never account for my motives, I seem built up of perversities--at nine o'clock I woke, and my first sensation was one of irritation. I was irritated with myself, and I was irritated with the thoughts of the old butler. I was irritated with the window-blind which I had drawn down all crooked. I was in a sulk with Geraldine. I looked at my face in the looking-glass. I was a fright. My eyes were red. I dressed, and I actually did not care what dress I put on. It did not matter; all my dresses were hideous, every woman's dress was hideous, except Geraldine's, she alone knew how to dress. Really never before had I been in such a vile and senseless humour. It seemed to take in the whole world. I passed in review all the men I had ever known. They were all about equally detestable; they seemed all so like one another, more or less hair on their faces, that was all, and yet women fall in love with these creatures; but then, what were women? I passed in review all the women I had ever known, and all the women I had ever heard of--they all had to stand for inspection beside the strange figure of Geraldine. Oh, what fools they looked, what dummies, what empty-headed apes, tricked out in borrowed feathers, full of spiteful tricks, and tricks to draw the attention of those other apes, the ones with beards. I thought of the school-girls at the boarding-school,--those virgins so full of suppressed vice, their finnikin manners, their whispers, and their sniggers. I never thought that I too had been one of those vicious virgins.