lf a tone even more intimate and
ingratiating. He and she had a secret; they were conspirators together:
which fact was both disconcerting and delicious. She recalled their
propinquity in the lobby; the remembered syllables which he had uttered
mingled with the faint scent of his broadcloth, the whiteness of his
wristbands, the gleam of his studs, the droop of his moustaches, the
downward ray of his glance, and the proud, nimble carriage of his great
limbs,--and formed in her mind the image of an ideal. An image regarded
not with any tenderness, but with naive admiration, and unquestioning
respect! And yet also with more than that, for when she dwelt on his
glance, she had a slight transient feeling of faintness which came and
went in a second, and which she did not analyse--and could not have
analysed.

Clouds of fear sailed in swift capriciousness across the sky of her
dreaming, obscuring it: fear of Mr. Cannon's breath-taking initiative,
fear of the upshot of her adventure, and a fear without a name.
Nevertheless she exulted. She exulted because she was in the very midst
of her wondrous adventure and tingling with a thousand apprehensions.

After a long time the latch of the drawing-room door cracked warningly.
Hilda retired within the kitchen out of sight of the lobby. She knew
that the child in her would compel her to wait like a child until the
visitor was gone, instead of issuing forth boldly like a young woman.
But to Florrie the young mistress with her stern dark mask and
formidable eyebrows and air of superb disdain was as august as a
goddess. Florrie, moving backwards, had now got nearly to the scullery
door with her wringing and splashing and wiping; and she had dirtied
even her face. As Hilda absently looked at her, she thought somehow of
Mr. Cannon's white wristbands. She saw the washing and the ironing of
those wristbands, and a slatternly woman or two sighing and grumbling
amid wreaths of steam, and a background of cinders and suds and
sloppiness.... All that, so that the grand creature might have a rim of
pure white to his coat-sleeves for a day! It was inevitable. But the
grand creature must never know. The shame necessary to his splendour
must be concealed from him, lest he might be offended. And this was
woman's loyalty! Her ideas concerning the business of domesticity were
now mixed and opposing and irreconcileable, and she began to suspect
that the bases of society might be more complex and confus