r her. She thought of Fritz
in a different way, the new Fritz, the Fritz who was a believer in the
angel. It seemed to her that he could be kept faithful most easily,
most surely, by such an appeal as Robin Pierce would have loved. She had
sought to rouse, to play upon the instincts of the primitive man. She
had not gone very far, it is true, but her methods had been common,
ordinary. She had undervalued Fritz's nature. That was what she felt
now. He had behaved badly to her, had wronged her, but he had believed
in her very much. She resolved to make his belief more intense. An
expression on his face--only that--had wrought a vital change in her
feeling towards him, her conception of him. She ranged him henceforth
with Sir Donald, with Robin Pierce. He stood among the believers in the
angel.

She called upon the angel passionately, feverishly.

There was strength in Lady Holme's character, and not merely strength
of temper. When she was roused, confident, she could be resolute,
persistent; could shut her eyes to side issues and go onward looking
straight before her. Now she went onward and she felt a new force within
her, a force that would not condescend to pettiness, to any groping in
the mud.

Lord Holme was puzzled. He felt the change in his wife, but did not
understand it. Since the fracas with Leo Ulford their relations had
slightly altered. Vaguely, confusedly, he was conscious of being pitied,
yes, surely pitied by his wife. She shed a faint compassion, like a
light cloud, over the glory of his wrongdoing. And the glory was abated.
He felt a little doubtful of himself, almost as a son feels sometimes
in the presence of his mother. For the first time he began to think of
himself, now and then, as the inferior of his wife, began even, now and
then, to think of man as the inferior of woman--in certain ways. Such a
state of mind was very novel in him. He stared at it as a baby stares
at its toes, with round amazement, inwardly saying, "Is this phenomenon
part of me?"

There was a new gentleness in Viola, a new tenderness. Both put him--as
one lifted and dropped--a step below her. He pulled his bronze moustache
over it with vigour.

His wife showed no desire to control his proceedings, to know what
he was about. When she spoke of Miss Schley she spoke kindly,
sympathetically, but with a dainty, delicate pity, as one who secretly
murmurs, "If she had only had a chance!" Lord Holme began to think it
a sad thing