ose his eyes, now, and pass out,
before he lost that moment of half-fulfilment!

And, the smile still on his lips, he lay back watching the flies wheeling
and chasing round the hanging-lamp. Sixteen of them there were, wheeling
and chasing--never still!

XII

When, walking from Lennan's studio, Olive reentered her dark little hall,
she approached its alcove and glanced first at the hat-stand. They were
all there--the silk hat, the bowler, the straw! So he was in! And
within each hat, in turn, she seemed to see her husband's head--with the
face turned away from her--so distinctly as to note the leathery look of
the skin of his cheek and neck. And she thought: "I pray that he will
die! It is wicked, but I pray that he will die!" Then, quietly, that he
might not hear, she mounted to her bedroom. The door into his
dressing-room was open, and she went to shut it. He was standing there
at the window.

"Ah! You're in! Been anywhere?"

"To the National Gallery."

It was the first direct lie she had ever told him, and she was surprised
to feel neither shame nor fear, but rather a sense of pleasure at
defeating him. He was the enemy, all the more the enemy because she was
still fighting against herself, and, so strangely, in his behalf.

"Alone?"

"Yes."

"Rather boring, wasn't it? I should have thought you'd have got young
Lennan to take you there."

"Why?"

By instinct she had seized on the boldest answer; and there was nothing
to be told from her face. If he were her superior in strength, he was
her inferior in quickness.

He lowered his eyes, and said:

"His line, isn't it?"

With a shrug she turned away and shut the door. She sat down on the edge
of her bed, very still. In that little passage of wits she had won, she
could win in many such; but the full hideousness of things had come to
her. Lies! lies! That was to be her life! That; or to say farewell to
all she now cared for, to cause despair not only in herself, but in her
lover, and--for what? In order that her body might remain at the
disposal of that man in the next room--her spirit having flown from him
for ever. Such were the alternatives, unless those words: "Then come to
me," were to be more than words. Were they? Could they be? They would
mean such happiness if--if his love for her were more than a summer love?
And hers for him? Was it--were they--more than summer loves? How know?
And, without knowing, how give such pai