the mistress of the house was ill in
bed and its guardianship therefore disorganized. The front doors of
Bursley--even the most select--were constantly ajar and the fresh wind
from off the pot-bank was constantly blowing through those exposed
halls and up those staircases. For the demon of public inquisitiveness
is understood in the Five Towns to be a nocturnal demon. The fear
of it begins only at dusk. A woman who in the evening protects her
parlour like her honour, will, while the sun is above the horizon,
show the sacred secrets of the kitchen itself to any one who chooses
to stand on the front step.

Louis put his hat and stick on the oak chest, and with a careless,
elegant gesture brushed back his dark hair. The door of the parlour
was slightly ajar. He pushed it gently open, and peeped round it with
a pleasant arch expression, on the chance of there being some one
within.

Rachel was lying on the Chesterfield. Her left cheek, resting on her
left hand, was embedded in the large cushion. A large coil of her
tawny hair, displaced, had spread loosely over the dark green of the
sofa. The left foot hung limp over the edge of the sofa; the jutting
angle of the right knee divided sharply the drapery of her petticoat
into two systems, and her right shoe with its steel buckle pressed
against the yielding back of the Chesterfield. The right arm lay
lissom like a snake across her breast. All her muscles were lax,
and every full curve of her body tended downward in response to the
negligent pose. Her eyes were shut, her face flushed; and her chest
heaved with the slow regularity of her deep, unconscious breathing.

Louis as he gazed was enchanted. This was not Miss Fleckring, the
companion and household help of Mrs. Maldon, but a nymph, a fay, the
universal symbol of his highest desire.... He would have been happy to
kiss the glinting steel buckle, so feminine, so provocative, so coy.
The tight rounded line of the waist, every bend of the fingers, the
fall of the eye-lashes--all were exquisite and precious to him after
the harsh, unsatisfying, desolating masculinity of Horrocleave's.
This was the divine reward of Horrocleave's, the sole reason of
Horrocleave's. Horrocleave's only existed in order that this might
exist and be maintained amid cushions and the softness of calm and
sequestered interiors, waiting for ever in acquiescence for the
arrival of manful doers from Horrocleave's. The magnificent pride of
male youth ani