remarks.)

She tried to reconstitute her evenings with Craven in her imagination,
keeping the conversation exactly as it had been, but giving him a
thoroughly plain face, a bad complexion, mouse-coloured feeble hair,
undistinguished features, ordinary eyes, and a short broad figure.
Certainly it would have made a difference. But how much difference?
Perhaps a good deal. But he had enjoyed the conversation as much as she
had, and there was nothing in her appearance now to arouse the lust of
the eye. Suddenly it occurred to her that she possessed now at least
one advantage. If a young man were attracted by her it must be her
personality, herself in fact, which attracted him. It could not be her
looks. And surely it is better to attract by your personality than by
your looks.

A woman's voice whispered within her just then, "It is better to attract
by both. Then you are safe."

She moved uneasily. Then she got up and went to the telephone. The
chances were in favour of Craven's being in his flat by now.

As she put her hand on the receiver, but before she took it down, Lady
Sellingworth thought of the Paris railway station, of what had happened
there, of the stern resolution she had come to that day, of the tears of
blood that had sealed it, of the will that had enabled her to stick to
it during ten years. And she thought, too, of that phrase of Caroline
Briggs's concerning the lust of the eye.

"I won't go!" she said to herself.

And she took the receiver down.

Almost immediately she was put through, and heard Craven's voice at
the other end, the voice which had recited those lines from Browning's
"Waring" by the fire, saying:

"Yes? Who is it?"

"Lady Sellingworth," she replied.

The sound of the voice changed at once, became eager as it said:

"Oh--Lady Sellingworth! I have only just come in. I know what it is."

"But how can you?"

"I do. You want me to dress for dinner. And we are to go in a cab and be
very respectable instead of Bohemian. Isn't that it?"

She hesitated. Then she said:

"No; it isn't that."

"Do tell me then!"

"I think--I'm afraid I can't come."

"Oh, no--it can't be that! But I have reserved the table in the corner
for us. And we are going to have gnocchi done in a special way with
cheese. Gnocchi with cheese! Please--please don't disappoint me."

"But I haven't been very well the last two days, and I'm rather afraid
of the cold."

"I am so sorry. But it's absolutely dry