Thus dismissing from her horizon all the human race, she found compensation in the freedom so acquired. If she chose to run bareheaded and slipshod into the King’s Road and come back with a lump of beef wrapped in a bloodstained bit of newspaper (as her acquaintance, Mrs. Venables, had caught her doing—“My dear, you never saw such an appalling sight in your life,” she said when reporting the incident, “and she had the impudence to make me shake hands with her—and the hand, my dear, in which she had been holding the beef”)—if she chose to do this, what mattered it to any one of God’s creatures, save perhaps Mrs. Venables’s glove-maker to whom it was an advantage? Her servant had a bad cold, time—the morning light was precious—and the putting on of hat and boots a retarding vanity. If she chose to bring in a shivering ragamuffin from the streets and warm him before the fire and stuff him with the tomato sandwiches and plum-cake set out for a visitor’s tea, who could say her nay? The visitor in revolt against the sight and smell of the ragamuffin, could get up and depart. It was a matter of no concern to Clementina. Eventually folks recognised Clementina’s eccentricity, classed it in the established order of things, ceased to regard it—just as dwellers by a cataract lose the sound of the thunder, and as a human wife ceases to be conscious of the wart on her husband’s nose. To this enviable height of freedom had Clementina risen. She sat by the fire, overwhelmed by memories. They had been conjured up by the girl with the terror at the back of her eyes; but their mass was no longer crushing. They came over her like a weightless grey cloud that had arisen from some remote past with which she had no concern. She had grown to look upon the tragedy impersonally, as though it were a melodramatic tale written by a young and inexperienced writer, in which the characters were overdrawn and untrue to life. The reading of the tale left her with the impression that Roland Thorne was an unprincipled weakling, Clementina Wing an hysterical little fool. Presently she rose, rubbed her face hard with both hands, a proceeding which had the effect of spreading the paint smudge into a bright gamboge over her cheeks, pushed the easel aside, and, taking down “Tristram Shandy” from her shelves, read the story of the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles, by way of a change of fiction, till her maid summoned her to her solitary dinner. Early the next morning, as soon as she had entered the studio and had begun to set her palette, preparatory to the day’s work, Tommy Burgrave appeared on the gallery, with a “Hullo, Clementina!” and ran down the spiral staircase. Clementina paused with a paint tube in her hand. “Look, my young friend, you don’t live here, you know,” she said coolly. “I’ll clear out in half a second,” he replied, smiling. “I’m bringing you news. You ought to be very grateful to me. I’ve got you a commission.” “Who’s the fool?” asked Clementina.