in!"

She took the knocker herself, and fluttered it against the door.

"You see," said the artist, "they're all alike; these knockers are as
stiff' as pokers."

He again curved his hand over his eyes. Mrs. Pendyce leaned against the
door; her knees were trembling violently.

'What is happening?' she thought. 'Perhaps he's only asleep,
perhaps----Oh God!'

She beat the knocker with all her force. The door yielded, and in the
space stood George. Choking back a sob, Mrs. Pendyce went in. He banged
the door behind her.

For a full minute she did not speak, possessed still by that strange
terror and by a sort of shame. She did not even look at her son, but
cast timid glances round his room. She saw a gallery at the far end, and
a conical roof half made of glass. She saw curtains hanging all the
gallery length, a table with tea-things and decanters, a round iron
stove, rugs on the floor, and a large full-length mirror in the centre of
the wall. A silver cup of flowers was reflected in that mirror. Mrs.
Pendyce saw that they were dead, and the sense of their vague and
nauseating odour was her first definite sensation.

"Your flowers are dead, my darling," she said. "I must get you some
fresh!"

Not till then did she look at George. There were circles under his eyes;
his face was yellow; it seemed to her that it had shrunk. This terrified
her, and she thought:

'I must show nothing; I must keep my head!'

She was afraid--afraid of something desperate in his face, of something
desperate and headlong, and she was afraid of his stubbornness, the dumb,
unthinking stubbornness that holds to what has been because it has been,
that holds to its own when its own is dead. She had so little of this
quality herself that she could not divine where it might lead him; but
she had lived in the midst of it all her married life, and it seemed
natural that her son should be in danger from it now.

Her terror called up her self-possession. She drew George down on the
sofa by her side, and the thought flashed through her: 'How many times
has he not sat here with that woman in his arms!'

"You didn't come for me last night, dear! I got the tickets, such good
ones!"

George smiled.

"No," he said; "I had something else to see to!"

At sight of that smile Margery Pendyce's heart beat till she felt sick,
but she, too, smiled.

"What a nice place you have here, darling!"

"There's room to walk about."

Mrs. Pen