And the glory of the riot through her veins of the tumultuous Thing she had kept strangled to torpor within her! The Thing that had been stirred by the springtide in a girl’s heart, that had leapt at the parrot tulips in the early May, that had almost escaped from grip on the moonlit night at Vienne, that had remained awake and struggling ever since—the glory to let it go free and carry her whithersoever it would! Art—to the devil with it! What was Art in comparison with this new-found glory? It made her ten years younger. It took years from the man for whose fascination she brought it into play. Hers was a double conquest, the rout of the woman, the capture of the man. Daily she battled. Sheila, the lovers, a new portrait of him which she suddenly conceived the splendid notion of painting, all were pretexts for keeping the unconscious man within the sphere of her influence. Any impression that the other had made on his heart or his mind should be deleted, and her impression stamped there in its place, so that when he met the other out of her presence, as meet her he undoubtedly must, he would wear it as a talisman against her arts and blandishments. Twice also during the dying days of the season, late that year, she went out into the great world and gave her adversary battle in the open. It was between these two engagements that she had a talk with Huckaby. Huckaby, doing his best to act loyally towards both parties, led a precarious moral existence. The sight of Clementina queening it in dazzling raiment about Quixtus’s house and the despairing confidences of Lena Fontaine had enabled him to form a fairly accurate judgment of the state of affairs. His heart began to bleed for Lena Fontaine. She would come to his lodgings and claim sympathy. To not a soul in the world but him could she talk freely. She was desperate. That abominable woman insulted her, trampled on her, poisoned Quixtus’s mind against her. He had changed suddenly, seemed to avoid her, and, when he found himself in her company, he was just polite and courteous in his gentle way, and smilingly eluded her. The Dinard intimacy, on which she had reckoned, had faded into the land of dreams. He was being dragged off before her eyes to some fool place up the river to be watched and guarded like a lunatic. What was she to do? Ruin would soon be staring her in the face. She had thought of upbraiding him for neglect, of reproaching him for having played fast and loose with her affections, of putting him through the ordeal of an emotional scene. Of that, however, she was afraid; it might scare him away for good and all. She wept, an unhappy and ill-treated woman, and Huckaby supplied sympathy and handkerchiefs and a mirror so that she could repair the ravages of tears. One day Huckaby and Clementina met in the hall of the Russell Square house. “Well,” she said. “Have you seen Mrs. Fontaine lately?” He admitted that he had.