iving woman a clear outline
of himself, his surroundings and his fears, that he fancied the main
impulse to this consummation had been his, notwithstanding that a faint
initiative had come from Ethelberta. All had completed itself quickly,
unceremoniously, and easily. Ethelberta had let him go a second time;
yet on foregoing mornings and evenings, when contemplating the necessity
of some such explanation, it had seemed that nothing less than Atlantean
force could overpower their mutual gravitation towards each other.

On his reaching home Faith was not in the house, and, in the restless
state which demands something to talk at, the musician went off to find
her, well knowing her haunt at this time of the day. He entered the
spiked and gilded gateway of the Museum hard by, turned to the wing
devoted to sculptures, and descended to a particular basement room, which
was lined with bas-reliefs from Nineveh. The place was cool, silent, and
soothing; it was empty, save of a little figure in black, that was
standing with its face to the wall in an innermost nook. This spot was
Faith's own temple; here, among these deserted antiques, Faith was always
happy. Christopher looked on at her for some time before she noticed
him, and dimly perceived how vastly differed her homely suit and
unstudied contour--painfully unstudied to fastidious eyes--from
Ethelberta's well-arranged draperies, even from Picotee's clever bits of
ribbon, by which she made herself look pretty out of nothing at all. Yet
this negligence was his sister's essence; without it she would have been
a spoilt product. She had no outer world, and her rusty black was as
appropriate to Faith's unseen courses as were Ethelberta's correct lights
and shades to her more prominent career.

'Look, Kit,' said Faith, as soon as she knew who was approaching. 'This
is a thing I never learnt before; this person is really Sennacherib,
sitting on his throne; and these with fluted beards and hair like plough-
furrows, and fingers with no bones in them, are his warriors--really
carved at the time, you know. Only just think that this is not imagined
of Assyria, but done in Assyrian times by Assyrian hands. Don't you feel
as if you were actually in Nineveh; that as we now walk between these
slabs, so walked Ninevites between them once?'

'Yes. . . . Faith, it is all over. Ethelberta and I have parted.'

'Indeed. And so my plan is to think of verses in the Bible about
Senn