rage those who
dare not resent, to wound and take the nonsense out of those about him,
will, at all events, preclude the possibility of his being passed over
as a factor not to be considered. If to charm and bestow gives the sense
of power, to thwart and humiliate may be found not wholly unsatisfying.

But in her case the inadequacy of the usual methods had forced itself
upon him. It was as if the dart being aimed at her, she caught it in
her hand in its flight, broke off its point and threw it lightly aside
without comment. Most women cannot resist the temptation to answer a
speech containing a sting or a reproach. It was part of her abnormality
that she could let such things go by in a detached silence, which did
not express even the germ of comment or opinion upon them. This, he
said, was the result of her beastly sense of security, which, in its
turn, was the result of the atmosphere of wealth she had breathed since
her birth. There had been no obstacle which could not be removed for
her, no law of limitation had laid its rein on her neck. She had not
been taught by her existence the importance of propitiating opinion.
Under such conditions, how was fear to be learned? She had not learned
it. But for the devil in the blue between her lashes, he realised that
he should have broken loose long ago.

"I suppose I deserved that for making a stupid appeal to sympathy," he
remarked. "I will not do it again."

If she had been the woman who can be gently goaded into reply, she
would have made answer to this. But she allowed the observation to
pass, giving it free flight into space, where it lost itself after the
annoying manner of its kind.

"Have you any objection to telling me why you decided to come to England
this year?" he inquired, with a casual air, after the pause which she
did not fill in.

The bluntness of the question did not seem to disturb her. She was not
sorry, in fact, that he had asked it. She let her work lie upon her
knee, and leaned back in her low garden chair, her hands resting upon
its wicker arms. She turned on him a clear unprejudiced gaze.

"I came to see Rosy. I have always been very fond of her. I did not
believe that she had forgotten how much we had loved her, or how
much she had loved us. I knew that if I could see her again I should
understand why she had seemed to forget us."

"And when you saw her, you, of course, decided that I had behaved, to
quote my own words--like a blackguard a