ce was evidently not an infallible
source of peace. She would be more at peace in some vulgar little place
that should owe its _cachet_ to Tottenham Court Road. There were nice
strong horrors in West Kensington; it was as if they beckoned her and
wooed her back to them. She had a relaxed recollection of Waterbath; and
of her reasons for staying on at Ricks the force was rapidly ebbing. One
of these was her pledge to Owen--her vow to press his mother close; the
other was the fact that of the two discomforts, that of being prodded by
Mrs. Gereth and that of appearing to run after somebody else, the former
remained for a while the more endurable.

As the days passed, however, it became plainer to Fleda that her only
chance of success would be in lending herself to this low appearance.
Then, moreover, at last, her nerves settling the question, the choice
was simply imposed by the violence done to her taste--to whatever was
left of that high principle, at least, after the free and reckless
meeting, for months, of great drafts and appeals. It was all very well
to try to evade discussion: Owen Gereth was looking to her for a
struggle, and it wasn't a bit of a struggle to be disgusted and dumb.
She was on too strange a footing--that of having presented an ultimatum
and having had it torn up in her face. In such a case as that the envoy
always departed; he never sat gaping and dawdling before the city. Mrs.
Gereth, every morning, looked publicly into "The Morning Post," the only
newspaper she received; and every morning she treated the blankness of
that journal as fresh evidence that everything was "off." What did the
Post exist for but to tell you your children were wretchedly
married?--so that if such a source of misery was dry, what could you do
but infer that for once you had miraculously escaped? She almost taunted
Fleda with supineness in not getting something out of somebody--in the
same breath indeed in which she drenched her with a kind of appreciation
more onerous to the girl than blame. Mrs. Gereth herself had of course
washed her hands of the matter; but Fleda knew people who knew Mona and
would be sure to be in her confidence--inconceivable people who admired
her and had the privilege of Waterbath. What was the use therefore of
being the most natural and the easiest of letter-writers, if no sort of
side-light--in some pretext for correspondence--was, by a brilliant
creature, to be got out of such barbarians? Fleda wa