res and Penates
consecrated by Adrian. Now and then for purposes of airing and dusting,
she entered the awful room--neither servants nor friends were allowed to
cross the threshold; but otherwise it was always locked and the key lay
in her jewel case. Adrian was the focus of her being. She put heavy
tasks on Jaffery. There was to be a fitting monument on Adrian's grave,
over which she kept him busy. In her blind perversity she counted on his
cooeperation. It was he who carried through negotiations with an eminent
sculptor for a bust of Adrian, which in her will, made about that time,
she bequeathed to the nation. She ordered him to see to the inclusion of
Adrian in the supplement to the Dictionary of National Biography. . . .
And all the time Jaffery obeyed her sovereign behests without a murmur
and without a hint that he desired reward for his servitude. But, to
those gifted with normal vision, signs were not wanting that he chafed,
to put it mildly, under this forced worship of Adrian; and to those who
knew Jaffery it was obvious that his one-sided arrangement could not
last forever. Doria remained blind, taking it for granted that every one
should kiss the feet of her idol and in that act of adoration find
august recompense. That the man loved her she was fully aware; she was
not devoid of elementary sense; but she accepted it, as she accepted
everything else, as her due, and perhaps rather despised Jaffery for his
meekness. Why, again, she disregarded what her instinct must have
revealed to her of the primitive passions lurking beneath the exterior
of her kind and tender ogre, I cannot understand. For one thing, she
considered herself his intellectual superior; vanity perhaps blinded her
judgment. At all events she did not realise that a change was bound to
come in their relations. It came, inevitably.

One day in June they sat together on the balcony of the St. John's Wood
flat, in the soft afternoon shadow, both conscious of queer isolation
from the world below, and from the strange world masked behind the vast
superficies of brick against which they were perched. Jaffery said
something about a nest midway on a cliff side overlooking the sea. He
also, in bass incoherence, formulated the opinion that in such a nest
might he found true happiness. The pretty languor of early summer
laughed in the air. Their situation, 'twixt earth and heaven, had a
little sensuous charm. Doria replied sentimentally:

"Yes, a little