lung to it, and the
gas stove, furred with rust, skulked like some obscene monster in its
corner. He was afraid, morally and physically afraid, to look at that
thing of infamy behind the back door. He tried to pretend the scullery
wasn't there.

And in the middle of it, and through the fury and the stupor, Violet
bloomed.

That was what he could not understand; how between her own cruelty and
that squalor she had the heart to bloom.

He dreaded every interruption and delay that detained him at
Woolridge's, every chance encounter that kept him from that lamentable
place where he feared and yet desired to be.

Yet it was in those last days of July that Granville, as if it had
passed through its mortal crisis, took, suddenly, a turn for the better.

He came into his house late one evening and found peace and order there,
and the strange, pungent smell of a thorough cleaning. There was a
clean, white cloth spread in the sitting-room for supper, spoons and
forks, and the china on the dresser and the table glistened; everything
that could be made to shine was shining. From the gas stove in the
scullery there came the alluring smell of a beefsteak pie baking. It was
wonderful. And it all seemed to have been done by some divine, invisible
agency. There was nobody about; not, at any rate, at the back; and
overhead there was no sound of footsteps.

He was gripped by a sense of mystery, almost of disaster; as if a wonder
so extreme had something ominous in it. Then he went into the front
sitting-room.

On the plush sofa, which had been moved from its place against the wall
and drawn right across the bow of the window, Violet lay, veiled from
the street by white Nottingham lace curtains. Pure white they were; such
whiteness as was not to be seen in the newest houses in the Avenue. The
furniture had been polished till it looked like new. All in a row
Ranny's silver prize cups shone again as on the day when he bore them
from the field. The smell of dust was gone. Instead of it there came
toward him a sweet smell of violets and of woman's hair.

On the sofa in the window Violet lay like a suburban odalisk,
voluptuous, heavy-scented. The flesh of her neck and arms showed rosy
under the thin, white muslin of her gown that clung to her in slender
folds and fell away, revealing the prone beauty of her body. The dim
light came on her through the Nottingham lace curtains, as light might
come through some Oriental lattice of frette