ttle
things that Mr. Price had had instructions to provide for the evening, Mr.
Gilman perhaps would not have caught sight of them had it not been for the
stridency of Miss Ingate's voice, which caused him to turn round.

Audrey experienced once again the sensation--which latterly was apt to
recur in her--of having too many matters on her mind simultaneously; in a
phrase, the sensation of the exceeding complexity of existence. And she
resented it. The interview with Rosamund was quite enough for one night. It
had been a triumph for her; she had surprised herself in that interview; it
had left her with a conviction of freedom; it had uplifted her. She ought
to have been in a state of exaltation after that interview, and she was.
Only, while in a state of exaltation, she was still in the old state of
depression--about the tendency of the concert, of her concert, and about
the rumoured disappearance of her fortune. Also she was preoccupied by the
very strange affair of Jane Foley and Aguilar.

And now--a further intricacy of mood--came a whole new set of emotions due
to the mere spectacle of Mr. Gilman's august back! She was intimidated by
Mr. Gilman's back. She knew horribly that in the afternoon she had treated
Mr. Gilman as Mr. Gilman ought never to have been treated. And, quite apart
from intimidation, she had another feeling, a feeling which was ghastly and
of which she was ashamed.... Assuming the disappearance of her fortune,
would Mr. Gilman's attitude towards her be thereby changed? ... She
admitted that young girls ought not to have such suspicions against
respectable and mature men of established position in the world.
Nevertheless, she could not blow the suspicion away.

But the instant Mr. Gilman's eye met hers the suspicion vanished, and not
the suspicion only, but all her intimidation. The miracle was produced by
something in the gaze of Mr. Gilman as it rested on her, something
wistful--not more definable than that, something which she had noticed in
Mr. Gilman's gaze on other occasions. It perfectly restored her. It gave
her the positive assurance of a fact which marvellously enheartens young
girls of about Audrey's years--to wit, that they have a mysterious power
surpassing the power of age, knowledge, wisdom, or wealth, that they
influence and decide the course of history, and are the sole true
mistresses of the world. Whence the mysterious power sprang she did not
exactly know, but she surmised--rightl