incomprehensible his word had weight. Vagueness was his foible, the
relaxation of an intellect uncomfortably keen. The spirit that looked
at you through his short-sighted eyes (magnified by enormous glasses)
seemed to have just returned from a solitary excursion in a dream. In
that mood the incomprehensible had for him a certain charm.

Mrs. Eliott had too much good taste to criticise Anne Majendie's. They
had simply got to recognise that Prior Street had more to offer her than
Thurston Square. That was the way she preferred to put it, effacing
herself a little ostentatiously.

Miss Proctor maintained that Prior Street had nothing to offer a creature
of Anne Fletcher's kind. It had everything to take, and it seemed bent on
taking everything. It was bad enough in the beginning, when she had given
herself up, body and soul, to the spinal lady; but to go and marry the
brother, without first disposing of the spinal lady in a comfortable home
for spines, why, what must the man be like who could let her do it?

"My dear," said Mrs. Eliott, "he's a saint, if you're to believe Anne."

Even Dr. Gardner smiled. "I can't say that's exactly what I should call
him."

"Need we," said Mr. Eliott, "call him anything? So long as she thinks him
a saint--"

Mr. Eliott--Mr. Johnson Eliott--hovered on the borderland of culture,
with a spirit purified from commerce by a Platonic passion for the exact
sciences. He was, therefore, received in Thurston Square on his own as
well as his wife's merits. He too had his little weaknesses. Almost
savagely determined in matters of business, at home he liked to sit in
a chair and fondle the illusion of indifference. There was no part of
Mr. Eliott's mental furniture that was not a fixture, yet he scorned the
imputation of conviction. A hunted thing in his wife's drawing-room, Mr.
Eliott had developed in a quite remarkable degree the protective
colouring of stupidity.

"How can she?" said Miss Proctor. "She's a saint herself, and she ought
to know the difference."

"Perhaps," said Dr. Gardner, "that's why she doesn't."

"I'm sure," said Mrs. Eliott, "it was the original attraction. There
could be no other for Anne."

"The attraction was the opportunity for self-sacrifice. Whatever she's
makes of Mr. Majendie, she's bent on making a martyr of herself." Miss
Proctor met the vague eyes of her circle with a glance that was defiance
to all mystery. "It's quite simple. This marriage is a short cut t