and indeterminately, vaguely skimming the
surface of many ominous probabilities and finding no hopeful
resting-place for conjecture, finally allowing a little desperate
gesture to escape him.

The music had stopped amid the desultory clapping of hands, and he
could hear people passing outside on their way into the garden. He
turned the handle slowly without opening the door.

"Be reasonable!" he appealed. "There is still time; let us go into
the ballroom; let us forget this folly!"

"You may go," she replied contemptuously; "I have no wish to detain
you--far from it. But if you leave me without giving me Mr. Oswyn's
address I shall ask Charles for it, and if Charles----"

Her husband interrupted her savagely.

"Oh, if you are bent on making a fool of yourself, I suppose I can't
prevent you. The man lives at 61, Frith Street. Now you have it. I
wash my hands of the whole affair."

He opened the door, and she passed out gravely before him, holding
her bouquet to her down-turned face; and then they parted tacitly,
the husband turning towards the door which led into the garden, the
wife making her way into the ball-room, and thence towards the
studio.

CHAPTER XXXIV

In the empty studio, from which, for one night, most of her
husband's impedimenta had been removed to allow place for the long
supper-table, which glistened faintly in the pale electric light,
she paused only long enough to wrap her fantastic person in the dark
cloak which she had caught up on her way.

Then she let herself out quietly by the private door into the road.
And she stood still a moment, blotted against the shadows,
hesitating, vaguely considering her next step.

The honey-coloured moon, casting its strange, silken glamour over
the white house, over the black outline of the trees in the garden,
spangled here and there with Japanese lanterns, gave an air of
immense unreality to the scene; and the tremulous notes of the
violins, which floated faintly down to her from the half-opened
windows of the ball-room, only heightened this effect, seeming just
then to be no more than the music of moonbeams to which the fairies
dance.

For a moment a sudden weakness and timidity overcame her. In a world
so transcendently unreal--had not she just seen her happiness become
the very dream of a shadow?--was it not the merest futility to take
a step so definite, to be passionate or intense? Better rather to
rest for a little in this vague world