But what sensations assailed him. They aroused in his decent gentlemanly mind not exactly a tumult, but a flux of emotions, impressions, and qualms; doubtful emotions, incredible impressions, and torturing qualms. That alluring picture of Orianda, her errant father, the abandoned Lizzie! Had the water perhaps heated his mind though it had cooled his body? He felt he would have to urge her, drag her if need be, from this “Black Dog.” The setting was fair enough and she was fair, but lovely as she was not even she could escape the brush of its vulgarity, its plebeian pressure. And if all this has, or seems to have, nothing, or little enough to do with the drying of Orianda’s hair, it is because the Honourable Gerald was accustomed to walk from grossness with an averted mind. “Orianda,” said he, when she rejoined him, “when are you going to give it up. You cannot stay here ... with Lizzie ... can you?” “Why not?” she asked, sharply tossing back her hair. “I stayed with my mother, you know.” “That was different from this. I don’t know how, but it must have been.” She took his arm. “Yes, it was. Lizzie I hate, and poor stupid father loves her as much as he loves his axe or his handsaw. I hate her meekness, too. She has taken the heart out of everything. I must get her away.” “I see your need, Orianda, but what can you do?” “I shall lie to her, lie like a libertine. And I shall tell her that my mother is coming home at once. No Lizzie could face that.” He was silent. Poor Lizzie did not know that there was now no Mrs. Crabbe. “You don’t like my trick, do you?” Orianda shook his arm caressingly. “It hasn’t any particular grandeur about it, you know.” “Pooh! You shouldn’t waste grandeur on clearing up a mess. This is a very dirty Eden.” “No, all’s fair, I suppose.” “But it isn’t war, you dear, if that’s what you mean. I’m only doing for them what they are naturally loth to do for themselves.” She pronounced the word “loth” as if it rimed with moth. “Lizzie,” he said, “I’m sure about Lizzie. I’ll swear there is still some fondness in her funny little heart.” “It isn’t love, though; she’s just sentimental in her puffy kind of way. My dear Honourable, you don’t know what love is.” He hated her to use his title, for there was then always a breath of scorn in her tone. Just at odd times she seemed to be—not vulgar, that was unthinkable—she seemed to display a contempt for good breeding. He asked with a stiff smile “What _is_ love?” “For me,” said Orianda, fumbling for a definition, “for me it is a compound of anticipation and gratitude. When either of these two ingredients is absent love is dead.” Gerald shook his head, laughing. “It sounds like a malignant bolus that I shouldn’t like to take. I feel that love is just self-sacrifice. Apart from the taste of the thing or the price of the thing, why and for what this anticipation, this gratitude?