in her.

It may have been a long while, it may have been only a few seconds that
she remained standing at her dressing-table, her hands pressed hard
against her convulsed mouth. She had closed her eyes, afraid to look
longer in the glass, lest something uncanny should peer out of it. She
did not pray--she had prayed so often before--but she fought with her
whole strength against the encroaching power of the Other. At length she
gradually released her lips. They were bruised, but they had ceased to
move. It was she herself who spoke, low but clearly and with
deliberation:

"I shall struggle. I shall never give in. You think you're the stronger.
I won't let you be. I'm fighting for my husband's happiness--do you
hear?--as well as my own. You're strong, but we shall be stronger, he
and I, in the end."

There was no answer, the sense of struggle was gone from her; and
suddenly she felt how mad it was to be talking to herself like that in
an empty room. She took off the little black toque which sat on her
bright head with an alien smartness to which she was now accustomed, and
forced herself to look in the glass while she pinned up a stray lock of
hair. Beyond an increased pallor and darker marks under her eyes, she
saw nothing unusual in her appearance.

It was five o'clock, and Ian would probably be awake and wanting his
tea. She went softly into the study and leaned over him. Sleep had
almost smoothed away the lines of effort and worry which had marred the
beauty of his face; in the eyes of her love he was always the same
handsome Ian Stewart as in the old Oxford days, when he had seemed as a
young god, so high above her reach.

She went to an oak table behind the sofa, on which the maid had set the
tea-things without awakening him, and sat there quietly watching the
kettle. The early London twilight began to veil the room. Ian stirred on
the sofa and sat up, with his back to her, unconscious of her presence.
She rose, vaguely supposing herself about to address some gentle word
to him. Then suddenly she had thrown one soft hand under his chin and
one across his eyes, and with a _brusquerie_ quite unnatural to her
pulled him backwards, while a ripple of laughter so strange as to be
shocking in her own ears burst from her lips, which cried aloud with a
defiant gayety:

"Who, Ian? Guess!"

Ian, with a sudden force as strange to her as her own laughter, her own
gay cry, pulled her hands away, held them an instant fas