In the repetition of the words there was the effect of a spray. The irritability of the one active cell subsided, that of the others was aroused. Somnambulism ceased. The entire brain awoke. But the truth had not yet fully permeated all the cerebral convolutions and the fact that it had not, manifested itself in the melodramatic phrase which, a week previous, Lennox had uttered, which all have uttered, all at least before whom the unforseen has sprung. "It is impossible!" She got up, went to the window, looked again. There was no impossibility there, no doubt even, or the peradventure of one. There was only the ineluctable truth. The aproned man disclosed it. His thumbless hand had held the book. From his mouth, in which there was a pipe, had come the benediction. He was Dr. Grantly. That was the ineluctable truth, the truth which already perhaps she had intercepted in the land of Beauty and Horror. The first sight of it had sickened. Now the physical effect had gone. But the nausea in passing had been replaced by another sensation, deadlier, equally human, that made her red and hot, blurred her eyes, set her quivering, shook her, put her thoughts on fire, vitriolised her with hate. Nietzsche said that a woman's ability to hate is in proportion to her inability to charm. The brute omitted to add that a woman's ability to charm corresponds to her evolution. There was nothing evolved about Cassy then. She had lapsed back into the primitive. Like Armide, she could have burned the palace that enchanted her. None the less, she did nothing. To do nothing may be very important. The inactivity saved her. During it, the vitriol vaporised; the hate fell by. She was still trembling, her hands were unsteady, but the fever was departing, the crisis had passed, the primitive had slunk back into the cellars of the subconscious, and, in the chair, to which without knowing it she had returned, she faced it. Without, some one knocked and, getting no answer, accepted the invitation as most people do. "Beg pardon, Mrs. Paliser. The car is at the door." Cassy half turned. "What?" Emma reconstructed it. "Whenever you are ready, mem, the car will be waiting." Cassy turned away. "That will do." "Thank you, mem." With that air which servants assume, Emma pursed her lips, reopened them, thought better of it, closed them and closed too the door. Facing it still, Cassy sat in the brocaded chair. Anger had shaken her and gone, taking with it its spawn which hatred is. What inhabited her then was disgust. I am in a nice mess, she told herself. But she told it without surprise, as though all along it was something which she might have known, could have avoided, but into which she had put her foot. A momentary vision of the red-crossed Lady Bountiful returned and she even smiled at it. It was a sad little smile though.