hair. The Arabs outside made
loutishly flattering remarks once or twice, and Rose, colouring, drew
back as far as she could into the carriage. Mr. Flaxman seemed not to
hear; his aunt, with that obtrusive thirst for information which is so
fashionable now among all women of position, was cross-questioning him
as to the trades and population of the district, and he was drily
responding. In reality his mind was full of a whirl of feeling, of a
wild longing to break down a futile barrier and trample on a baffling
resistance, to take that beautiful tameless creature in strong coercing
arms, scold her, crush her, love her! Why does she make happiness so
difficult? What right has she to hold devotion so cheap? He too grows
angry. 'She was _not_ in love with that spectral creature,' the inner
self declares with energy--'I will vow she never was. But she is like
all the rest--a slave to the merest forms and trappings of sentiment.
Because he _ought_ to have loved her, and didn't, because she _fancied_
she loved him, and didn't, my love is to be an offence to her!
Monstrous--unjust!'

Suddenly they sped past St. Wilfrid's, resplendent with lights, the
jewelled windows of the choir rising above the squalid walls and roofs
into the rainy darkness, as the mystical chapel of the Graal, with its
'torches glimmering fair,' flashed out of the mountain storm and
solitude on to Galahad's seeking eyes.

Rose bent forward involuntarily. 'What angel singing!' she said,
dropping the window again to listen to the retreating sounds, her
artist's eye kindling. 'Did you hear it? It was the last chorus in the
St. Matthew Passion music.'

'I did not distinguish it,' he said--'but their music is famous.'

His tone was distant; there was no friendliness in it. It would have
been pleasant to her if he would have taken up her little remark and let
bygones be bygones. But he showed no readiness to do so. The subject
dropped, and presently he moved back to his former seat and Lady
Charlotte and he resumed their talk. Rose could not but see that his
manner towards her was much changed. She herself had compelled it, but
all the same she saw him leave her with a capricious little pang of
regret, and afterwards the drive seemed to her more tedious and the
dismal streets more dismal than before.

She tried to forget her companions altogether. Oh! what would Robert
have to say? She was unhappy, restless. In her trouble lately it had
often pleased her t