only a moment, she looked at him very earnestly; and he
was aware that he hoped that she was going to redeem herself--hoped it
almost ardently, not for his own sake--those sober hopes were dead for
ever--but for the sake of the past and what it had really held of
fondness and sympathy and essential respect.

Gwendolen looked at him earnestly; it was as though a dim suspicion
crossed her; and then, poor thing! she put it aside. Yes, he was very
sorry for her as he listened to her.

"Owen, that is clever of you," she said, "but very, very clever. That is
precisely what I've been saying to myself ever since the idea came to
me. I can't forgive myself for that piece of stupidity--my only one, I
will say, in regard to such recognitions and perceptions. I may be a
stupid woman about a great many things, but I'm not stupid about rooms.
The horror of Aunt Pickthorne's room dulled my eyes so that in all truth
I can say that I never saw that pagoda. And from the moment I've had my
idea I've moaned--but literally moaned--over having lost it. Of course
it is what the room needs, and all that it needs--the travesty of a soul
standing on that mahogany table."

"Yes, the centre-table is the place for it," said Owen.

"It _is_ clever of you to feel it just as I do, Owen, dear," she went
on. "The pagoda was meant for this room and for this room only; for, you
know, I didn't think Cicely Waterlow at all happily inspired in placing
it as she had."

"As she had?" He rapped the question out with irrepressible quickness.

"Yes, among all that rather trashy lacquer and glass in that rather
gimcrackery little drawing-room of hers. The pagoda looked there, what
it had always looked in Aunt Pickthorne's room--a gimcrack itself."

"Looked?" he repeated. "How does it look now? How has she placed it
now?"

And, for the first time in all their intercourse, he saw that Gwendolen
was suddenly confused. He had hardly trapped her. She had set the trap
herself, and inadvertently had walked into it. A faint colour rose to
her cheek. She dropped for a moment her eyes upon the fire. Then,
covering her self-consciousness with a show of smiling vivacity, she
knelt to poke the logs, saying:

"I don't know, I really don't know, Owen. Cicely is always changing her
room, you know. She is very quick at feeling what's in the air--as quick
as I am really--and I haven't seen her for ages. She has gone to live in
London--oh, yes, didn't you know? Yes, she c