e scenes were love; they were
Marguerite; they were what he had lost.... Strange, that he should throw
the ring into the river! Nevertheless it was a right gesture. She
deserved it. She was absolutely wrong; he was absolutely right--she had
admitted it. Towards him she had no excuse. Logically her attitude was
absurd. Yet no argument would change it. Stupid--that was what she was!
Stupid! And ruthless! She would be capable of martyrizing the whole
world to her sense of duty, her damnable, insane sense of duty.... She
was gone. He was ruined; she had ruined him. But he respected her. He
hated to respect her, but he respected her.

A thought leapt up in his mind--and who could have guessed it? It was
the thought that the secrecy of the engagement would save him from a
great deal of public humiliation. He would have loathed saying: "We've
broken it off."

CHAPTER VIII

INSPIRATION

I

George, despite his own dispositions, as he went up in the lift, to
obviate the danger of such a mishap, was put out of countenance by the
overwhelming splendour of Miss Irene Wheeler's flat. And he did not
quite recover his aplomb until the dinner was nearly finished. The rooms
were very large and lofty; they blazed with electric light, though the
day had not yet gone; they gleamed with the polish of furniture, enamel,
bookbindings, marble, ivory, and precious metals; they were ennobled by
magnificent pictures, and purified by immense quantities of lovely
flowers. George had made the mistake of arriving last. He found in the
vast drawing-room five people who had the air of being at home and
intimate together. There were, in addition to the hostess, Lois and
Laurencine Ingram, Everard Lucas, and a Frenchman from the French
Embassy whose name he did not catch. Miss Wheeler wore an elaborate
Oriental costume, and apologized for its simplicity on the grounds that
she was fatigued by a crowded and tiresome reception which she had held
that afternoon, and that the dinner was to be without ceremony. This
said, her conversation seemed to fail, but she remained by George's
side, apart from the others. George saw not the least vestige of the
ruinous disorder which, in the society to which he was accustomed,
usually accompanied a big afternoon tea, or any sign of a lack of
ceremony. He had encountered two male servants in the hall, and had also
glimpsed a mulatto woman in a black dress and a white apron, and a
Frenchwoman in a black dres