and when the
worst came to the worst, Estelle would softly murmur to Lionel,
"Petrarch and Laura have borne it, and we must bear it too."

She became impatient for Lionel's arrival and bought a new and
exquisitely becoming blue chiffon dress. Both she and her maid were so
struck by her appearance that when Estelle heard Winn banging about at
the last moment in his dressing room, she knocked at his door. Even the
lowest type of man can be used as a superior form of looking glass. He
shouted "Come in!" and stared at her while he fumbled at his collar
stud; then he lifted his eyebrows and said "War-paint--eh?"

"I only wanted to remind you, dear," said Estelle patiently, "that the
key of the wine cellar is in my bureau drawer."

Lionel arrived before Winn had finished dressing. Estelle greeted him
with outstretched hands. "I am so very glad to see you at last," she
said in her softest, friendliest voice. "I think it will do Winn good to
have you here."

Lionel laughed shyly.

"I shouldn't have thought," he said, "that Winn would need much more
good."

"Ah, my dear fellow!" said Winn's voice behind him, "you don't know how
great my needs are. Sorry I couldn't meet you."

Estelle's beautiful, wavering eyes rested for a moment on her husband.
She had never known a man to dress so quickly, and it seemed to her an
unnecessary quality.

The dinner was a great success. Both men were absurdly gay. Winn told
good stories, laughed at Lionel, and rallied his young wife. She had
never seen him like this before, and she put it down to the way one man
sets off another.

Estelle felt that she was being a great success, and it warmed her
heart. The two men talked for her and listened to her; she had a moment
when she thought that perhaps, after all, she needn't relegate Winn to a
lower world.

They accepted with enthusiasm her offer to sing to them after dinner and
then they kept her waiting in the drawing-room for an hour and a half.

She sat there opposite a tall Italian mirror, quivering with her power,
her beauty, her ability to charm, and with nothing before her but the
empty coffee-cups.

She played a little, she even sang a little (the house was small) to
recall them to a sense of her presence, but inexplicably they clung to
their talk. Winn who at ordinary times seemed incapable of more than
disconnected fragments of speech was (she could hear him now and then
quite distinctly) talking like a cataract; and Lionel w