freaks
who discharge his servants, borrow his money, and insult his neighbors?
This place is shunned like a lazaretto!"

"Well, then, why does he--why does he--" persisted Imogen.

"Bah!" interrupted Miss Broadwood impatiently, "why did he in the first
place? That's the question."

"Marry her, you mean?" said Imogen coloring.

"Exactly so," said Miss Broadwood sharply, as she snapped the lid of her
matchbox.

"I suppose that is a question rather beyond us, and certainly one which
we cannot discuss," said Imogen. "But his toleration on this one point
puzzles me, quite apart from other complications."

"Toleration? Why this point, as you call it, simply is Flavia. Who could
conceive of her without it? I don't know where it's all going to end,
I'm sure, and I'm equally sure that, if it were not for Arthur,
I shouldn't care," declared Miss Broadwood, drawing her shoulders
together.

"But will it end at all, now?"

"Such an absurd state of things can't go on indefinitely. A man isn't
going to see his wife make a guy of herself forever, is he? Chaos
has already begun in the servants' quarters. There are six different
languages spoken there now. You see, it's all on an entirely false
basis. Flavia hasn't the slightest notion of what these people are
really like, their good and their bad alike escape her. They, on the
other hand, can't imagine what she is driving at. Now, Arthur is worse
off than either faction; he is not in the fairy story in that he sees
these people exactly as they are, _but_ he is utterly unable to see
Flavia as they see her. There you have the situation. Why can't he see
her as we do? My dear, that has kept me awake o' nights. This man who
has thought so much and lived so much, who is naturally a critic, really
takes Flavia at very nearly her own estimate. But now I am entering upon
a wilderness. From a brief acquaintance with her you can know nothing of
the icy fastnesses of Flavia's self-esteem. It's like St. Peter's; you
can't realize its magnitude at once. You have to grow into a sense of
it by living under its shadow. It has perplexed even Emile Roux, that
merciless dissector of egoism. She has puzzled him the more because he
saw at a glance what some of them do not perceive at once, and what will
be mercifully concealed from Arthur until the trump sounds; namely, that
all Flavia's artists have done or ever will do means exactly as much to
her as a symphony means to an oyster; that there is