s them half an hour later, stooping over some designs
in black and white. She saw Mrs. Langley Wyndham look up in her
husband's face with a smile, raising her golden eyebrows. The look was
one of those intimate trifles that have no meaning beyond the two
persons concerned in it. For Audrey, smarting from Wyndham's insult, it
was the flick of the lash in her face.

CHAPTER XXI

In the autumn of that year Audrey woke and found herself the classic of
the hour, a literary queen without a rival. Wyndham's great work was
finished, and it stood alone. Not another heroine of fiction could lift
her head beside Laura, the leading character of "An Idyll of
Piccadilly." He himself owned, almost with emotion, that it was the best
thing he had ever done. He had not touched the surface this time; he had
gone deep down to the springs of human nature. He had not merely
analysed the woman till her character lay in ruins around him, but he
had built her up again out of the psychic atoms, and Laura was alive.
She showed the hand of the master by her own nullity. In her splendid
vanity she was like some piece of elaborate golden fretwork, from which
the substance had been refined by excess of workmanship.

The voice of criticism was one voice; there arose a unanimous hymn of
praise from every literary "organ" in the country. It was Mr. Langley
Wyndham's masterpiece, a work that left the excellence of "London
Legends" far behind it on a lower plane. Though there was no falling off
in point of style, the author had found something better to do this
time than to cultivate the flowers of perfect speech. "Laura" was a
triumph of intimate characterisation. And the brutal touches that
disfigured his former work were absent from this; he had shown us that
the boldest, most inflexible realism is compatible with a delicacy
worthy of the daintiest of esoteric ideals.

The book, dedicated "To my Wife," appeared early in October. By November
the question of the sources was opened out, and it began to be whispered
(a whisper that could be traced to the private utterances of Miss Gladys
Armstrong) that the prototype of Laura was a Miss Audrey Craven. In the
person of her ubiquitous double, Miss Audrey Craven became a leading
figure in London society. Then bit by bit the news got into the papers,
and Wyndham's _succes d'estime_ was followed by _succes de scandale_
which promised to treble his editions.

Thus Audrey, unable to achieve greatness