nd white striped bathrobe.

"Up, up, and see the great doom's image!" she cried, her eyes sparkling
with excitement. "The hall is full of trunks, they are packing. What
bolt has fallen? It's you, _ma cherie_, you've brought Ulysses
home again and the slaughter has begun!" she blew a cloud of smoke
triumphantly from her lips and threw herself into a chair beside the
bed.

Imogen, rising on her elbow, plunged excitedly into the story of the
Roux interview, which Miss Broadwood heard with the keenest interest,
frequently interrupting her with exclamations of delight. When Imogen
reached the dramatic scene which terminated in the destruction of the
newspaper, Miss Broadwood rose and took a turn about the room, violently
switching the tasselled cords of her bathrobe.

"Stop a moment," she cried, "you mean to tell me that he had such a
heaven-sent means to bring her to her senses and didn't use it--that he
held such a weapon and threw it away?"

"Use it?" cried Imogen unsteadily. "Of course he didn't! He bared his
back to the tormentor, signed himself over to punishment in that speech
he made at dinner, which everyone understands but Flavia. She was here
for an hour last night and disregarded every limit of taste in her
maledictions."

"My dear!" cried Miss Broadwood, catching her hand in inordinate delight
at the situation, "do you see what he has done? There'll be no end to
it. Why he has sacrificed himself to spare the very vanity that devours
him, put rancors in the vessels of his peace, and his eternal jewel
given to the common enemy of man, to make them kings, the seed of Banquo
kings! He is magnificent!"

"Isn't he always that?" cried Imogen hotly. "He's like a pillar of
sanity and law in this house of shams and swollen vanities, where people
stalk about with a sort of madhouse dignity, each one fancying himself a
king or a pope. If you could have heard that woman talk of him! Why,
she thinks him stupid, bigoted, blinded by middleclass prejudices. She
talked about his having no aesthetic sense and insisted that her artists
had always shown him tolerance. I don't know why it should get on my
nerves so, I'm sure, but her stupidity and assurance are enough to drive
one to the brink of collapse."

"Yes, as opposed to his singular fineness, they are calculated to do
just that," said Miss Broadwood gravely, wisely ignoring Imogen's tears.
"But what has been is nothing to what will be. Just wait until Flavia's
black