o the office.

Where he arrived very late, and had to pass the gauntlet of his chiefs
frigid ignoring of the dereliction.

When Charles-Norton had gone, Dolly suddenly sat up with a click of small
heels upon the floor. She remained thus some time, a frown between her
eyes. She was not triumphant, she was worried. She seemed to recognize
danger; her transparent nostrils dilated to the smell of powder; and
plainly, you could see her steel her being. After a while she nodded to
herself, curtly and very decidedly, and went on about her work.

She met Charles-Norton at the door when he returned in the evening. He
was somewhat limp after a day of _mea culpas_! and she, a quarter of an
hour before the time for his reappearance, had powdered her nose--which,
she knew, gave her an expression half amusing, half piteous, just like
that of the clown who is playing his tricks at the circus while his
little daughter is dying at home. "Hello, Goosie," she said breathlessly
(also she had rubbed a trace of rouge under her eyes); "hello, just in
time for dinner! Made a fine chocolate cake. Poor dear, you look so
tired!"

And after supper, which in spite of Dolly's very ostensible effort at
exuberance, was rather silent, for Charles-Norton, with a man's
detestation of "scenes," still felt somewhat embarrassed at the
happenings of the morning, she drew up the Morris chair to the lamp, sat
Charles-Norton in it, and filled his pipe for him. When thus "fixed up
comfy," he felt a soft breath upon his neck, and two little hands at his
neck-tie. Off came tie and collar, and then the coat, and then the shirt,
and then--zip-zip.

"Say, Dolly," he remonstrated mildly; "couldn't you wait till morning?"

"There," she said; "it's almost all done. Just a wee bit more here.
There! Now here is a kiss! It didn't hurt, Goosie, did it?"

And Charles-Norton had to concede that it did not hurt. How could he have
explained the subtle feeling within him, that sort of swooping descent of
his inwards that came with, and the dullness of all things which followed
always his shearings?

"No, it didn't hurt," he repeated. But a vague dissatisfaction like a
yeast stirred within him, and a flicker,--beaten down immediately, it is
true, trampled, smothered,--of revolt.

Calmly, coolly, efficiently, though, Dolly had taken the upper hand. The
next morning she sent him sheared to the office; she sent him sheared the
same night to bed.

And thus day after day f