the Albany had
translated principle into practice. But the hues of the boudoir made
the gaudiest effects of Regency furniture appear sombre. The place
resembled a gigantic and glittering kaleidoscope deranged and
arrested.

G.J.'s glance ran round the room like a hunted animal seeking escape,
and found no escape. He was as disturbed as he might have been
disturbed by drinking a liqueur on the top of a cocktail. Nevertheless
he had to admit that some of the contrasts of pure colour were rather
beautiful, even impressive; and he hated to admit it. He was aware of
a terrible apprehension that he would never be the same man again, and
that henceforth his own abode would be eternally stricken for him with
the curse of insipidity. Regaining somewhat his nerve, he looked for
pictures. There were no pictures. But every piece of furniture was
painted with primitive sketches of human figures, or of flowers, or
of vessels, or of animals. On the front of the mantelpiece were
perversely but brilliantly depicted, with a high degree of finish,
two nude, crouching women who gazed longingly at each other across the
impassable semicircular abyss of the fireplace; and just above their
heads, on a scroll, ran these words:

"The ways of God are strange."

He heard movements and a slight cough in the next room, the door
leading to which was ajar. Concepcion's cough; he thought he
recognised it. Five minutes ago he had had no notion of seeing her;
now he was about to see her. And he felt excited and troubled, as much
by the sudden violence of life as by the mere prospect of the meeting.
After her husband's death Concepcion had soon withdrawn from London.
A large engineering firm on the Clyde, one of the heads of which
happened to be constitutionally a pioneer, was establishing a canteen
for its workmen, and Concepcion, the tentacles of whose influence
would stretch to any length, had decided that she ought to take up
canteen work, and in particular the canteen work of just that firm.
But first of all, to strengthen her prestige and acquire new prestige,
she had gone to the United States, with a powerful introduction to
Sears, Roebuck and Company of Chicago, in order to study industrial
canteenism in its most advanced and intricate manifestations.
Portraits of Concepcion in splendid furs on the deck of the steamer
in the act of preparing to study industrial canteenism in its most
advanced and intricate manifestations had appeared in the il