he room rather hurriedly. She realised that he
had almost kissed her. Would he have said, "I'm sorry, but you looked
such a baby," or, "Forgive me, it was seeing you again after so long,"
or, "Ariadne, can you forgive me? I lost my head."

She plumped for the baby, and wondered if the visit could conceivably be
going to be a slight strain. In old days there had always been a certain
tenseness about their relationship, made worse by her attempts to
topple over his gentlemanliness. She had felt that if her wish could
have been gratified just once, she would have been released from it and
never have wanted to repeat the experiment. Also a little of the
responsibility would have been his--thus obliterating the irritating
daily spectacle of his untarnished blamelessness.

Of course he had never been in love with her. She had always been buoyed
up by little things she wouldn't even have noticed in some one she
hadn't cared about. If there were acute disquieting moments when the
troublante quality of her loveliness tossed him about
unmercifully--weren't they moments that any stranger might go through
sitting next to her at dinner? No--the truth always had been that he was
really fond of her.

"I'm glad now," she smiled to herself, "how lucky that we can't always
sculpt our own relationships."

She went down to dinner--in the huge hall full of armchairs and cushions
and antlers and comfort St. John stood with his back to the fire smoking
a cigarette which he threw into the grate when he saw her (St. John
invariably threw away his cigarette when you came into the room and then
asked your permission to light a new one. In her mind's eye Ariadne
always saw him opening the door for his wife after a violent scene with
her).

"My dear," she said, "what a divine house."

"The wing you are sleeping in was built by the fifth Lord....

"The staircase was designed by....

"The mantelpieces in the drawing room....

"After dinner I will show you...."

Dinner was announced.

She tucked her hand under his arm.

"Are you going to take me in to dinner, St. John?"

"Of course," he smiled at her.

The dining room was big enough to reduce the immense pieces of Georgian
silver--beautiful they were--to reasonable proportions.

St. John said there were some very fine pieces of Queen Anne which he
would show her.

"There was," she murmured, "nothing like Queen Anne."

The attentiveness of the footman and even of the butler did no