stically to the left of them, in sharp
perspective, a sensational spectacle.

"It's very large," Marguerite commented. Her voice was nervous.

"Yes, it's rather more than large," he said dryly.

He would not share his thoughts with her. He knew that she had some
inklings of taste, but in that moment he preferred to pretend that her
artistic perception was on a level with that of William and Mary. They
boarded the steamer again, and took their old places; and the menacing
problem of their predicament was still between them.

"We can have some tea downstairs if you like," he said, after the
steamer had turned round and started upstream.

She answered in tones imperfectly controlled:

"No, thank you. I feel as if I couldn't swallow anything." And she
looked up at him very quickly; with the embryo of a smile, and then
looked down again very quickly, because she could not bring the smile to
maturity.

George thought:

"Am I going to have a scene with her--on the steamer?" It would not
matter much if a scene did occur. There was nobody else on deck forward
of the bridge. They were alone--they were more solitary than they might
have been in the studio, or in any room at No. 8. The steamer was now
nearly heading the wind, but she travelled more smoothly, for she had
the last of the flood-tide under her.

George said kindly and persuasively:

"Upon my soul, I don't know what the old gentleman's got against me."

She eagerly accepted his advance, which seemed to give her courage.

"But there's nothing to know, dear. We both know that. There's nothing
at all. And yet of course I can understand it. So can you. In fact it
was you who first explained it to me. If you'd left No. 8 when I did and
he'd heard of our engagement afterwards, he wouldn't have thought
anything of it. But it was you staying on in the house that did it, and
him not knowing of the engagement. He thought you used to come to see me
at nights at the studio, me and Agg, and make fun of everything at No.
8--especially of his wife. He's evidently got some such idea in his
head, and there's no getting it out again."

"But it's childish."

"I know. However, we've said all this before, haven't we?"

"But the idea's _got_ to be got out of his head again!" said George
vigorously--more dictatorially and less persuasively than before.

Marguerite offered no remark.

"And after all," George continued, "he couldn't have been so desperately
keen on--your st