s edifice that love should be a romantical affair, a flame,
noted by all and fed by the adoration of a husband who was harsh to the
world, but to her a monster of infatuated fidelity.

Something of this impinged upon Mr. Spokesly's consciousness and he
regarded her for a moment with profound respect.

"I should say," he muttered, returning to his cigarette, "you haven't
done so badly for yourself."

She gave him an extraordinarily quick look, like a flash of sheet
lightning from a calm evening sky, which left him puzzled. He was not
aware, at that time, that no woman will ever admit she has bettered
herself by marrying a given man. She must retain for ever that shining
figure of him she might have loved, a sort of domestic knight-errant in
golden armour, who keeps occasional vigils at her side while the weary
actuality slumbers in gross oblivion. Mrs. Dainopoulos knew that Mr.
Spokesly saw nothing of this. She knew him for what he was, a being
entirely incapable of compassing the secrets of a woman's heart. She
knew he imagined that love was all, that women were at the mercy of
their love for men, and that chivalrous ideas, rusted and clumsily
manipulated, were still to be found in his mind. And she saw the
fragility and delicate thinness of his love affair with Ada Rivers.
Anything could break it, anything could destroy it, she reflected. Those
fancies ... of course he said he was engaged; but an engagement, as Mrs.
Dainopoulos knew, having lived in a London suburb, was nothing. Yes,
anything might make him forget Ada. And as she repeated the word
"anything" to herself in a kind of ecstasy, Mrs. Dainopoulos turned her
head quickly and listened. There was a sound of someone being admitted.

"So you've met your fate, anyway," she observed to Mr. Spokesly, yet
still listening to the distant sound.

"Yes," he said with a smile, "I reckon you can cross me off as caught.
What's that? Come back, I s'pose. Time for me to be off, anyway. I'm
sure...."

Mrs. Dainopoulos held up her hand. She was still listening with her head
slightly inclined, her eyes fixed upon Mr. Spokesly, as though absently
pondering the perilous chances of his emotional existence. Cross him off
as caught! She smiled again in that lambent heat-lightning way of hers.
A woman who spends her life in a reclining seclusion becomes very much
of a clairvoyant, an electric condenser of emotions. Mr. Spokesly was
agreeably flattered by the intent interest of h