But she—she had learned so rigidly to repress herself in speech and still more in manner, that she found herself at such a moment not moved but frozen. She took it, with a sort of dreary triumph, as a sign that she had at last attained self-mastery, Justin’s virtue—not considering that a runaway engine and an engine that has jammed are equally beyond the driver’s control. And so—governed as ever by the Code, she told him that she was unhappy in the tone that she would have told him that her new shoes were tight. Yet she never dreamed that he took her flippancy at its face value—he—Justin—whose Adamry, with the deadly injustice of pure worship, she had endowed with omniscience. If Justin did not understand it was because he did not choose: and he did not choose because her emotion offended his inexorable taste. Thus, merciless to him as he to her, she reasoned, and for the first time in her life was bitter against him for the hardness of his heart. Yet, affected as she must always be by his each unconscious change of tone, how could she fail to respond when he laughed at this good joke of hers and, without admitting that he should or should not have written to Coral, put it to her, as a woman and a collector, that it was time to change the subject. “Unhappy? Rats! Come and help with the shelves. Coral can look after herself. Besides, of course I’ll fix up something. Only leave me alone, Laura! I’ve not done you any harm. Don’t worry so! I can look after myself, can’t I?” She looked at him with great doubtful eyes. He laughed impatiently. “Don’t be such a grandmother,” he insisted. “Leave me alone!” She gave him a smile then, a half smile as doubtful as her eyes; but she shook her head. “I can’t,” said Laura. “Oh, stuff!” said Justin. And then they began to discuss matters of importance. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXV Laura had wanted Justin to come with her to see the last of Coral. She knew that Coral would expect it: she was of the class that could be genuinely moved in public. But she knew also that Justin would shiver at the idea of Coral’s farewells. She wished he did not have to be considered: she wished he could laugh and say—“Oh, well, we must go through with it, I suppose,” and provide himself with chocolates and roses, and endure a farewell from his sister-in-law that might or might not culminate in an embrace. She wished he would be vulgar and human and uncritical for once. She wished——