She would seize Morris as a tiger seizes its prey. She did not disguise that from herself. As she lay now, trembling, upon her bed, she never hesitated to admit to herself that the thought of her domination over Morris was her great glory. She had never dominated any one before. He followed her like a man in a dream, and she was not young, she was not beautiful, she was not clever.... It was her own personal, personal, personal triumph. And then, on that, there swept over her the flood of her tenderness for him, how she longed to be good to him, to care for him, to mend and sew and cook and wash for him, to perform the humblest tasks for him, to nurse him and protect him. She knew that the end of this might be social ruin for both of them!... Ah, well, then, he would only need her the more! She was quieter now--the trembling ceased. How strange the way that during these months they had been meeting, so often without their own direct agency at all! She recalled every moment, every gesture, every word. He seemed already to be part of herself, moving within herself. She sat up on her bed; moved back to her glass. She bathed her face, slipped on her dress, and went downstairs. They were a family party at dinner, but, of course, without Falk. He was always out in the evening now. Joan talked, chattered on. The meal was soon over. The Archdeacon went to his study, and the two women sat in the drawing-room, Joan by the window, Mrs. Brandon, hidden in a high arm-chair, near the fireplace. The clock ticked on and the Cathedral bells struck the quarters. Joan's white dress, beyond the circle of lamp-light was a dim shadow. Mrs. Brandon turned the pages of her book, her ears straining for the sound of Falk's return. As she sat there, so inattentively turning the pages of her book, the foreboding sense of some approaching drama flooded the room. For how many years had she lived from day to day and nothing had occurred--so long that life had been unconscious, doped, inert. Now it had sprung into vitality again with the sudden frantic impertinence of a Jack-in-the-Box. For twenty years you are dry on the banks, half-asleep, stretching out lazy fingers for food, slumbering, waking, slumbering again. Suddenly a wave comes and you are swept off--swept off into what disastrous sea? She did not think in pictures, it was not her way, but to-night, half- terrified, half-exultant, in the long dim room she waited, the pressure of her heart beating up into her throat, listening, watching Joan furtively, seeing Morris, his eternal shadow, itching with its long tapering fingers to draw her away with him beyond the house. No, she would be true with herself. It was he who would be drawn away. The power was in her, not in him....