placate him.

There was a pause, and then George, his eyes fixed on her hand,
remarked:

"I see you've got your ring on."

She too looked at her hand.

"My ring? Naturally. What do you mean?"

He proceeded cruelly:

"I suppose you don't wear it in the house, so that the sight of it
shan't annoy him."

She flushed once more.

"Oh, George, dear!" Her glance asked for mercy, for magnanimity.

"Do you wear it when you're in the house, or don't you?"

Her eyes fell.

"I daren't excite him. Truly, I daren't. It wouldn't do. It wouldn't be
right."

She was admitting George's haphazard charge against her. He was
astounded. But he merely flung back his head and raised his eyebrows. He
thought:

"And yet she sticks to it he's nice to her! My God!"

He said nothing aloud. The Royal Hospital, Greenwich, showed itself in
the distance like a domed island rising fabulously out of the blue-green
water. Even far off, before he could decipher the main contours of the
gigantic quadruple pile, the vision excited him. His mind, darkened by
the most dreadful apprehensions concerning Marguerite, dwelt on it
darkly, sardonically, and yet with pleasure. And he proudly compared his
own disillusions with those of his greatest forerunners. His studies,
and the example of Mr. Enwright, had inspired him with an extremely
enthusiastic worship of Inigo Jones, whom he classed, not without
reason, among the great creative artists of Europe. He snorted when he
heard the Royal Hospital referred to as the largest and finest
charitable institution in the world. For him it was the supreme English
architectural work. He snorted at the thought of that pompous and absurd
monarch James I ordering Inigo Jones to design him a palace surpassing
all palaces and choosing a sublime site therefor, and then doing
nothing. He snorted at the thought of that deluded monarch Charles I
ordering Inigo Jones to design him a palace surpassing all palaces, and
receiving from Inigo Jones the plans of a structure which would have
equalled in beauty and eclipsed in grandeur any European structure of
the Christian era--even Chambord, even the Escurial, even
Versailles--and then accomplishing nothing beyond a tiny fragment of the
sublime dream. He snorted at the thought that Inigo Jones had died at
the age of nearly eighty ere the foundations of the Greenwich palace had
begun to be dug, and without having seen more than the fragment of his
unique Whitehall--after