committal manner. Yet she must have noticed his wounded
reserve. He did not like such duplicity. He would have preferred her to
be less miraculously angelic.

When he re-entered the studio, Agg, who very seldom smoked, was puffing
violently at a cigarette. She reclined on one elbow on the settee, her
eyes fixed on the portrait of herself. George was really perturbed by
the baffling queerness of the scenes through which he was passing.

"Look here, infant-in-arms," she began immediately. "I only wanted to
say two words to you about Marguerite. Can you stand it?"

There was a pause. George walked in front of her, hiding the easel.

"Yes," he said gruffly.

"Well, Marguerite's a magnificent girl. She's extraordinarily capable.
You'd think she could look after herself as well as anyone. But she
can't. I know her far better than you do. She needs looking after.
She'll make a fool of herself if she isn't handled."

"How do you mean?"

"You know how I mean."

"D'you mean about the old man?"

"I mean about the perfectly horrid old man.... Ah! If I was in your
place, if I was a man," she said passionately, "do you know what I
should do with Marguerite? I should carry her off. I should run away
with her. I should drag her out of the house, and she should know what a
real man was. I'm not going to discuss her with you. I'm not going to
say any more at all. I'm off to bed. But before you go, I do think you
might tell me my portrait's a pretty good thing."

And she did not say any more.

III

The written part of the examination lasted four days; and then there was
an interval of one day in which the harassed and harried aspirants might
restore themselves for the two days' ordeal of the viva voce. George had
continued to be well satisfied with his work up to the interval. He
considered that he had perfectly succeeded in separating the lover and
the examinee, and that nothing foreign to the examination could vitiate
his activity therein. It was on the day of repose, a Wednesday, that a
doubt suddenly occurred to him as to the correctness of his answer, in
the "Construction" paper, to a question which began with the following
formidable words: "A girder, freely supported at each end and forty feet
long, carries a load of six tons at a distance of six feet from one end
and another load of ten tons----" Thus it went on for ten lines. He had
always been impatient of detail, and he hated every kind of calculation.
Nevert