e alone with her. She
was marvellously comforting, precious beyond price. All his
susceptibilities, wounded by the scene at Alexandra Grove, and further
irritated by Agg, were instantaneously salved and soothed. Her tones,
her scarcely perceptible gesture of succour, produced the assuaging
miracle. She fulfilled her role to perfection. She was a talented and
competent designer, but as the helpmeet of a man she had genius. His
mind dwelt on her with rapture.

"You'll be going out as soon as you've changed, dear?" she said
affectionately to Agg.

"Yes," answered Agg, who at the mirror was wiping from her face the
painted signs of alcoholism. She had thrown off the bag wig. "You'd
better take the key with you. You'll be back before I am." She sat down
on one of the draped settees which were beds in disguise, and
Marguerite got a hat, cloak, and gloves.

While George was resuming his overcoat, which Marguerite held for him,
Agg suddenly sprang up and rushed towards them.

"Good night, Flora Macdonald," she murmured in her deep voice in
Marguerite's ear, put masculine arms round her, and kissed her. It was a
truly remarkable bit of male impersonating, as George had to admit,
though he resented it.

Then she gave a short, harsh laugh.

"Good night, old Agg," said Marguerite, with sweet responsiveness, and
smiled ingenuously at George.

George, impatient, opened the door, and the damp wind swept anew into
the studio.

IV

It was a fine night; the weather had cleared, and the pavements were
drying. George, looking up in a pause of the eager conversational
exchanges, drew tonic air mightily into his lungs.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"Tite Street," said Marguerite. "That's the Tower House." And she nodded
towards the formidable sky-scraper which another grade of landlord had
erected for another grade of artists who demanded studios from the
capitalist. Marguerite, the Chelsea girl, knew Chelsea, if she knew
nothing else; her feet turned corners in the dark with assurance, and
she had no need to look at street-signs. George regarded the short
thoroughfare made notorious by the dilettantism, the modishness, and the
witticisms of art. It had an impressive aspect. From the portico of one
highly illuminated house a crimson carpet stretched across the pavement
to the gutter; some dashing blade of the brush had maliciously
determined to affront the bourgeois Sabbath. George stamped on the
carpet; he hated it because