ee!"

But the next instant she had managed to open the door and she was
gone.

He sprang out to the landing. She was running down the stone stairs.

"Christine!"

She did not stop. G.J. might be marvellously subtle; but he could not
be subtle enough to divine that on that night Christine happened to
be the devotee of the most clement Virgin, and that her demeanour
throughout the visit had been contrived, half unconsciously, to enable
her to perform a deed of superb self-denial and renunciation in the
service of the dread goddess. He ate most miserably alone, facing an
empty chair; the desolate solitude of the evening was terrible; he
lacked the force to go seeking succour in clubs.

Chapter 20

MASCOT

A single light burned in Christine's bedroom. It stood low on the
pedestal by the wide bed and was heavily shaded, so that only one half
of the bed, Christine's half, was exempt from the general gloom of the
chamber. The officer had thus ordained things. The white, plump arm of
Christine was imprisoned under his neck. He had ordered that too. He
was asleep. Christine watched him. On her return from the Albany she
had found him apparently just as she had left him, except that he
was much less talkative. Indeed, though unswervingly polite--even
punctilious with her--he had grown quite taciturn and very obstinate
and finicking in self-assertion. There was no detail as to which he
did not formulate a definite wish. Yet not until by chance her eye
fell on the whisky decanter did she perceive that in her absence
he had been copiously drinking again. He was not, however, drunk.
Remorseful at her defection, she constituted herself his slave; she
covered him with acquiescences; she drank his tippler's breath. And he
was not particularly responsive. He had all his own ideas. He ought,
for example, to have been hungry, but his idea was that he was not
hungry; therefore he had refused her dishes.

She knew him better now. Save on one subject, discussed in the
afternoon, he was a dull, narrow, direct man, especially in love. He
had no fancy, no humour, no resilience. Possibly he worshipped women,
as he had said, perhaps devoutly; but his worship of the individual
girl tended more to ritualism than to ecstasy. The Parisian devotee
was thrown away on him, and she felt it. But not with bitterness. On
the contrary, she liked him to be as he was; she liked to be herself
unappreciated, neglected, bored. She thought of the