"No; no; I don't." He stood up, and sent a slow unseeing gaze about the room. The gaze took in his wife, and rested on her long enough to make her feel that she was no more to him--mauve tea-gown, Chinese amethysts, touch of rouge and silver sandals--than a sheet of glass through which he was staring: staring at what? She had never before felt so inexistent. "Well--I'm dog-tired--down and out," he said with one of his sudden jerks, shaking his shoulders and turning toward the door. He did not remember to say goodnight to her: how should he have, when she was no longer there for him? After the door had closed, Pauline in her turn looked slowly about the room. It was as if she were taking stock of the havoc wrought by an earthquake; but nothing about her showed any sign of disorder except the armchair her husband had pushed back, the rug his movement had displaced. With instinctive precision she straightened the rug, and rolled the armchair back into its proper corner. Then she went up to a mirror and attentively scrutinized herself. The light was unbecoming, perhaps ... the shade of the adjacent wall-candle had slipped out of place. She readjusted it ... yes, that was better! But of course, at nearly midnight--and after such a day!--a woman was bound to look a little drawn. Automatically her lips shaped the familiar: "Pauline, don't worry: there's nothing in the world to worry about." But the rouge had vanished from the lips, their thin line looked blue and arid. She turned from the unpleasing sight, putting out one light after another on the way to her dressing-room. As she bent to extinguish the last lamp its light struck a tall framed photograph: Lita's latest portrait. Lita had the gift of posing--the lines she fell into always had an unconscious eloquence. And that little round face, as sleek as the inside of a shell; the slanting eyes, the budding mouth ... men, no doubt, would think it all enchanting. Pauline, with slow steps, went on into the big shining dressing-room, and to the bathroom beyond, all ablaze with white tiling and silvered taps and tubes. It was the hour of her evening uplift exercises, the final relaxing of body and soul before she slept. Sternly she addressed herself to relaxation. XVII WHAT was the sense of it all? Nona, sitting up in bed two days after her nocturnal visit to the Housetop, swept the interval with a desolate eye. She had made her great, her final, refusal. She had sacrificed herself, sacrificed Heuston, to the stupid ideal of an obstinate woman who managed to impress people by dressing up her egotism in formulas of philanthropy and piety. Because Aggie was forever going to church, and bossing the committees of Old Women's Homes and Rest-cures for Consumptives, she was allowed a license of cruelty which would have damned the frivolous.