is prepared for either eventuality. The little domestic quarrel over
the luncheon-table had not been fought to a definite finish, and the
question was how far Lady Anne was in a mood to renew or forgo
hostilities. Her pose in the arm-chair by the tea-table was rather
elaborately rigid; in the gloom of a December afternoon Egbert's
pince-nez did not materially help him to discern the expression of her
face.

By way of breaking whatever ice might be floating on the surface he made
a remark about a dim religious light. He or Lady Anne were accustomed to
make that remark between 4.30 and 6 on winter and late autumn evenings;
it was a part of their married life. There was no recognised rejoinder
to it, and Lady Anne made none.

Don Tarquinio lay astretch on the Persian rug, basking in the firelight
with superb indifference to the possible ill-humour of Lady Anne. His
pedigree was as flawlessly Persian as the rug, and his ruff was coming
into the glory of its second winter. The page-boy, who had Renaissance
tendencies, had christened him Don Tarquinio. Left to themselves, Egbert
and Lady Anne would unfailingly have called him Fluff, but they were not
obstinate.

Egbert poured himself out some tea. As the silence gave no sign of
breaking on Lady Anne's initiative, he braced himself for another Yermak
effort.

"My remark at lunch had a purely academic application," he announced;
"you seem to put an unnecessarily personal significance into it."

Lady Anne maintained her defensive barrier of silence. The bullfinch
lazily filled in the interval with an air from _Iphigenie en Tauride_.
Egbert recognised it immediately, because it was the only air the
bullfinch whistled, and he had come to them with the reputation for
whistling it. Both Egbert and Lady Anne would have preferred something
from _The Yeomen of the Guard_, which was their favourite opera. In
matters artistic they had a similarity of taste. They leaned towards the
honest and explicit in art, a picture, for instance, that told its own
story, with generous assistance from its title. A riderless warhorse
with harness in obvious disarray, staggering into a courtyard full of
pale swooning women, and marginally noted "Bad News", suggested to their
minds a distinct interpretation of some military catastrophe. They could
see what it was meant to convey, and explain it to friends of duller
intelligence.

The silence continued. As a rule Lady Anne's displeasu