she said slowly.

She paused, then added, reluctantly:

"You can go to bed."

The man went softly out of the room. As he shut the door she breathed
a deep sigh, that was almost a sob. So difficult had she found it to
govern herself, not to do the crazy thing.

She poured out the lemonade and put ice into it.

As she did so she made grimaces, absurd grimaces of pain and misery,
like those on the faces of the two women in Mantegna's picture of Christ
and the Marys in the Brera at Milan. They are grotesque, yet wonderfully
moving in their pitiless realism. But tears fall from the eyes of
Mantegna's women and no tears fell from Lady Holme's eyes. Still making
grimaces, she sipped the lemonade. Then she put down the glass, leaned
back on the sofa and shut her eyes. Her face ceased to move, and became
beautiful again in its stillness. She remained motionless for a long
time, trying to obtain the mastery over herself. In act she had obtained
it already, but not in emotion. Indeed, the relinquishing of violence,
the sending of the footman to bed, seemed to have increased the passion
within her. And now she felt it rising till she was afraid of being
herself, afraid of being this solitary woman, feeling intensely and able
to do nothing. It seemed to her as if such a passion of jealousy, and
desire for immediate expression of it in action, as flamed within her,
must wreak disaster upon her like some fell disease, as if she were in
immediate danger, even in immediate physical danger. She lay still like
one determined to meet it bravely, without flinching, without a sign of
cowardice.

But suddenly she felt that she had made a mistake in dismissing the
footman, that the pain of inaction was too great for her to bear. She
could not just--do nothing. She could not, and she got up swiftly and
rang the bell. The man did not return. She pressed the bell again. After
three or four minutes he came in, looking rather flushed and put out.

"I want you to take a note to Eaton Square," she said. "It will be ready
in five minutes."

"Yes, my lady."

She went to her writing table and wrote this note to Leo Ulford:

"DEAR MR. ULFORD,--I am grieved to play you false, but I am too
tired to-night to come on. Probably you are amusing yourself. I
am sitting here alone over such a dull book. One can't go to bed
at twelve, somehow, even if one is tired. The habit of the season's
against early hours and one couldn't sleep. Be nic