h the habit of the world had never
been able to subdue, had increased. In ten years of retirement, in the
hundreds of hours of solitude which those ten years had held for her, it
had grown within her. And now it began to torment her.

Life brings gifts to almost everyone, and often the gift-bearer's
approach is absolutely unexpected. So it had been in Lady Sellingworth's
case. She had had no premonition that a change was preparing for her.
Nothing had warned her to be on the alert when young feet turned into
Berkeley Square on a certain Sunday in autumn and made towards her
door. Abruptly, after years of neglect, it seemed as if life suddenly
remembered that there was a middle-aged woman, with lungs which still
mechanically did their work, and a heart which still obstinately
persisted in beating, living in Berkeley Square, and that scarcely a
bare bone had been thrown to her for some thousands of days. And then
life brought her Craven, with an unusual nature, with a surely romantic
mind, with a chivalrous sense that was out of the fashion, with
faculties making for friendship; life offered, or seemed to offer her
Craven, to whisper in her ear, "You have been starving alone for a
long time. To tell the truth, I had forgotten all about you. I did not
remember you were there. I don't quite know why you persist in
being there. But, as you do, and as you are wearing thin for want of
sustenance, here is something for you!"

And now, because of what life had done, Lady Sellingworth was afraid.
When she had parted from her friends after the theatre party, and was
once more alone in her big house, she knew thoroughly, absolutely, for
the first time what life had done.

All the calm, the long calm of her years of retirement from the
world, had gone. She now knew how strangely safe she had felt in her
loneliness. She had felt surely something of the safety of a nun of one
of the enclosed orders. In her solitude she had learnt to understand
how dangerous the great world is, how full of trials for the nerves,
the temper, the flesh, the heart. The woman who goes into it needs to
be armed. For many weapons thrust at her. She must be perpetually on the
alert, ready to hold her own among the attacking eyes and tongues. And
she must not be tired, or dull, or sad, must not show, or follow, her
varying moods, must not quietly rest in sincerity. When she had lived in
the world Lady Sellingworth had scarcely realized all this. But in
her