d about. His present anxiety was in
proportion to his past admiration of Mrs. Armine. He had adored her
enough once to be very much afraid of her now.

"I do--I must say I hope she won't make a scene," he said.

"Oh, no."

"Yes, but you didn't see her this afternoon."

"She was upset. Some people can't endure daytime sleep. She's had time
now to recover."

But Hartley did not seem to be reassured. He kept looking furtively
towards the door by which Ibrahim had vanished. In about five minutes it
was opened again by Ibrahim. He stood aside, slightly bending and
looking on the floor, and Mrs. Armine came in, dressed in a sort of
elaborate tea-gown, grey in colour, with silver embroideries. She was
carefully made up, but not made up pale. Her cheeks were delicately
flushed with colour. Her lips were red. Her shining hair was arranged to
show the beautiful shape of her head as clearly as possible and to leave
her lovely neck quite bare. Everything that could be done to render her
attractive had been very deftly done. Nevertheless, even Isaacson, who
had seen the change in her that afternoon, and had been prepared for
further change in her by Hartley, was surprised by the alteration a few
hours had made in her appearance.

Middle-age, with its subtle indications of what old age will be, had
laid its hands upon her, had suddenly and firmly grasped her. As before,
since she had been in Egypt, she had appeared to most people very much
younger than she really was, so now she appeared older, decisively
older, than she actually was. When Isaacson had looked at her in his
consulting-room he had thought her not young, nor old, nor definitely
middle-aged. Now he realized exactly what she would be some day as a
painted and powdered old woman, striving by means of clever corsets, a
perfect wig, and an ingenious complexion to simulate that least
artificial of all things, youth. The outlines of the face were sharper,
cruder than before; the nose and chin looked more pointed, the
cheek-bones much more salient. The mouth seemed to have suddenly "given
in" to the thing it had hitherto successfully striven against. And the
eyes burnt with a fire that called the attention to the dark night
slowly but certainly coming to close about this woman, and to withdraw
her beauty into its blackness.

Isaacson's thought was: "What must be the state of the mind which has
thus suddenly triumphed over a hitherto triumphant body?" And he felt
like a