looked. "The little lamb--" she said.

Then she was silent, discerning in the man's face, bent over the sleeping
child, the divine look of love and tenderness. She was silent, held by an
old enchantment and an older vision; brooding on things dear and secret
and long-forgotten.

CHAPTER XXX

Though Thurston Square saw little of Mrs. Majendie, the glory of Mrs.
Eliott's Thursdays remained undiminished. The same little procession
filed through her drawing-room as before. Mrs. Pooley, Miss Proctor, the
Gardners, and Canon Wharton. Mrs. Eliott was more than ever haggard and
pursuing; she had more than ever the air of clinging, desperate and
exhausted, on her precipitous intellectual heights.

But Mrs. Pooley never flagged, possibly because her ideas were vaguer
and more miscellaneous, and therefore less exhausting. It was she who
now urged Mrs. Eliott on. This year Mrs. Pooley was going in for
thought-power, and for mind-control, and had drawn Mrs. Eliott in with
her. They still kept it up for hours together, and still they dreaded
the disastrous invasions of Miss Proctor.

Miss Proctor rode roughshod over the thought-power, and trampled
contemptuously on the mind-control. Mrs. Gardner's attitude was
mysterious and unsatisfactory. She seemed to stand serenely on the shore
of the deep sea where Mrs. Eliott and Mrs. Pooley were for ever plunging
and sinking, and coming up again, bobbing and bubbling, to the surface.
Her manner implied that she would die rather than go in with them; it
also suggested that she knew rather more about the thought-power and the
mind-control than they did; but that she did not wish to talk so much
about it.

Mr. Eliott, dexterous as ever, and fortified by the exact sciences, took
refuge from the occult under his covering of profound stupidity. He had a
secret understanding with Dr. Gardner on the subject. His spirit no
longer searched for Dr. Gardner's across the welter of his wife's
drawing-room, knowing that it would find it at the club.

Now, in October, about four o'clock on the Thursday after Peggy's
birthday, Canon Wharton and Miss Proctor met at Mrs. Eliott's. The Canon
had watched his opportunity and drawn his hostess apart.

"May I speak with you a moment," he said, "before your other guests
arrive?"

Mrs. Eliott led him to a secluded sofa. "If you'll sit here," said she,
"we can leave Johnson to entertain Miss Proctor."

"I am perplexed and distressed," said the Canon