"Yes; I know," Mrs. Waterlow pursued, still with the genial blandness.
"And as to our little joke, Mr. Stacpole, this room, in fact, is in many
ways a room of my girlhood. The furniture was my mother's, and Cicely,
when the idea struck her, had it brought from the garret of my old home,
where it has stood in disgrace for many a year. She has been clever
about it, hasn't she?"

"It's genius," said Owen, "What made her think of it?" And then, with a
pang, he wondered whether Gwendolen had thought of it first. Was it
imaginable that Gwendolen could have turned away from beauty and plunged
herself into such gay austerities of ugliness?

"Well, things are in the air, you know," said Mrs. Waterlow, pouring out
the tea,--"that's what Cicely always says, at all events,--reactions,
repulsions, wearinesses. This room is, she says, a discipline."

"Things in the air": had Gwendolen felt them first, and Mrs. Waterlow
felt them after her? This question of priority became of burning
interest for him.

"The trouble is that one may get too much of any discipline," he
commented, "if it ceases to be self-inflicted and is imposed upon us.
How would your daughter like it if all Chislebridge took to buttoned
black satin and old flower-pieces? It's as an exception that it has its
charm and its meaning. But if it became a commonplace?"

"Well, that's the point," said old Mrs. Waterlow. "Will it? It has very
much vexed me for years to watch Chislebridge picking Cicely's brains.
And I said to her that I wondered whether it would be possible for her
to make a room that wouldn't be copied, and she said that she believed
she could. If she could achieve ugliness, she said--downright ugliness,
she believed they would fall back. The room is a sort of wager between
us, for I am not at all convinced that she will succeed. Sheep, you
know, will leap into the ditch if they see their leader land there."

Owen's head was whirling. It was as though suddenly the little crystal
rings of the pagoda had given out a sportive, significant tinkle. This,
then, was what it meant? It was a jest, a game; but it was also a trap.
For whom? Chislebridge, on old Mrs. Waterlow's lips, could mean only
Gwendolen. He did not know quite what he hoped or feared, but he knew
that he must conceal from old Mrs. Waterlow his recognition of her
meaning.

"I felt from the first moment that I saw her in the curiosity-shop that
Mrs. Waterlow was the sort of person who would alwa