with three poplar-trees in a row. She opened
its green gate without pausing, went down a path, and stopped at the
first of three green doors. A young man with a beard, resembling an
artist, who was standing behind the last of the three doors, watched her
with a knowing smile on his face. She took out a latch-key, put it in
the lock, opened the door, and passed in.

The sight of her face seemed to have given the artist an idea. Propping
his door open, he brought an easel and canvas, and setting them so that
he could see the corner where she had gone in, began to sketch.

An old stone fountain with three stone frogs stood in the garden near
that corner, and beyond it was a flowering currant-bush, and beyond this
again the green door on which a slanting gleam of sunlight fell. He
worked for an hour, then put his easel back and went out to get his tea.

Mrs. Bellew came out soon after he was gone. She closed the door behind
her, and stood still. Taking from her pocket the bulky envelope, she
slipped it into the letter-box; then bending down, picked up a twig, and
placed it in the slit, to prevent the lid falling with a rattle. Having
done this, she swept her hands down her face and breast as though to
brush something from her, and walked away. Beyond the outer gate she
turned to the left, and took the same street back to the river. She
walked slowly, luxuriously, looking about her. Once or twice she
stopped, and drew a deep breath, as though she could not have enough of
the air. She went as far as the Embankment, and stood leaning her elbows
on the parapet. Between the finger and thumb of one hand she held a small
object on which the sun was shining. It was a key. Slowly, luxuriously,
she stretched her hand out over the water, parted her thumb and finger,
and let it fall.

CHAPTER IV

MRS. PENDYCE'S INSPIRATION

But George did not come to take his mother to the theatre, and she whose
day had been passed in looking forward to the evening, passed that
evening in a drawing-room full of furniture whose history she did not
know, and a dining-room full of people eating in twos and threes and
fours, at whom she might look, but to whom she must not speak, to whom
she did not even want to speak, so soon had the wheel of life rolled over
her wonder and her expectation, leaving it lifeless in her breast. And
all that night, with one short interval of sleep, she ate of bitter
isolation and futility, and of the