hurl at your head."

She quoted furiously, "'While her husband still sings to deaf ears, Mrs.
Prothero has found the secret of capturing her public. She has made her
way straight to its heart. And the heart of Mrs. Prothero's public is
unmistakably in the right place.' Oh--if Mrs. Prothero's public knew
what Mrs. Prothero thinks of it. I give them what they want, do I? As if
I gave it them because they want it. If they only knew why I give it,
and how I'm fooling them all the time! How I make them pay--for _you_!
Just think, Owen, of the splendid, the diabolical irony of it!"

"So very small," he murmured, "and yet so fierce."

"Just think," she went on, "how I'm enjoying myself."

"Just think," said Prothero, "how I am not."

"Then" (she returned it triumphantly), "you're paying for my enjoyment,
which is what you want."

The clock struck six. She went out of the room, and returned, bringing
an overcoat which she said had grown miles too big for him. She warmed
it at the fire and helped him on with it, and disappeared for a moment
under its flapping wings, so large was that overcoat.

All the way to Fleet Street, Prothero, wrapped in his warm overcoat,
meditated tenderly on his wife's humour.

LVI

Nothing, Tanqueray said, could be more pathetic than the Kiddy spreading
her diminutive skirts before Prothero, to shelter that colossal figure.

But the Kiddy, ever since Tanqueray had known her, had refused to be
pathetic; she had clenched her small fists to repel the debilitating
touch of sympathy. She was always breaking loose from the hands that
tried to restrain her, always facing things in spite of her terror,
always plunging, armoured, indomitable, into the thick of the fight. And
she had always come through somehow, unconquered, with her wounds in
front. The wounds he had divined rather than seen, ever since he, in
their first deplorable encounter, had stuck a knife into her. She had
turned that defeat, he remembered, into a brilliant personal triumph;
she had forced him to admire her; she had worn over that mark, as it
were, a gay and pretty gown.

And now, again, Tanqueray was obliged to abandon his vision of her
pathos. The spectacle she presented inspired awe rather and amazement;
though all that she called on you to observe, at the moment, was merely
an insolent exhibition of a clever imp. The Kiddy was minute, but her
achievements were enormous; she was ridiculous, but she was sublime.

S