“Even rag-time. Rag-time worst of all.” Yet she began to play softly one of Chopin’s preludes, in a dreamy way. “Tell me when you want me to sing,” said Herbert. “I will,” said Clare. There was silence for a little while, except for Clare’s dream-music. Mrs. Heywood dozed over her knitting, and her head nodded on her chest. Presently Herbert rose from his chair and touched the electric bell. A moment later Mollie came in. “Yes?” asked Mollie. Herbert spoke quietly so that he should not interrupt his wife’s music. “Bring me _The Financial Times_, Mollie. It’s in my study.” “Yes, sir,” said Mollie. She brought the paper and left the room again. There was another silence, except for the soft notes of the music. Herbert turned over the pages of _The Financial Times_, and yawned a little, and then let the paper drop. His head nodded and then lolled sideways. In a little while he was as fast asleep as his mother, and snored, quietly at first, then quite loudly. Clare stopped playing, and looked over the music-rest with a strange, tragic smile at her husband and her mother-in-law. She rose from the piano-stool, and put her hands to her head, and then at her throat, breathing quickly and jerkily, as though she were being stifled. “A jolly evening!” she exclaimed in a whisper. “Oh, God!” She stared round the room, with rather wild eyes. “It is stuffy here. It is stifling.” She moved toward the piano again, with her hands pressed against her bosom. “I feel that something _must_ happen. Something _must_ break.” She took up a large china vase from the piano, moved slowly toward the window, hesitated for a moment, looked round at her sleeping husband, and then hurled the vase straight through the window. It made an appalling noise of breaking glass. Herbert Heywood jumped up from his seat as though he had been shot. “Good God!” he said. “What the devil!----” Mrs. Heywood was equally startled. She sat up in her chair as though an earthquake had shaken the house. “Good gracious! Whatever in the world-----” At the same moment Mollie opened the door. “Good ‘eavins, ma’am!” she cried. “Whatever ‘as ‘appened?” Clare Heywood answered very quietly: “I think something must have broken,” she said. Then she gave a queer, strident laugh. CHAPTER II MRS. Heywood was arranging the drawingroom for an evening At Home, dusting the mantelshelf and some of the ornaments with a little hand broom. There were refreshments on a side table. Mollie was trying to make the fire burn up. Every now and then a gust of smoke blew down the chimney. Clare was sitting listlessly in a low chair near the French window, with a book on her lap, but she was not reading. “Drat the fire,” said Mollie, with her head in the fireplace. “For goodness’ sake, Mollie, stop it smoking like that!” said Mrs. Heywood. “It’s no use my dusting the room.” “The devil is in the chimney, it strikes me,” said Mollie. Mrs. Heywood expressed her sense of exasperation.