"Another believer in the angel!" she thought.

"May I come in?"

It was Mr. Bry's cold voice. His discontented, sleek face was peeping round the door.

Sir Donald got up to go.

As Lady Holme drove away from Covent Garden that night she was haunted by a feverish, embittering thought:

"Will everyone notice it but Fritz?"

Lord Holme indeed seemed scarcely the same man who had forbidden Carey to come any more to his house, who had been jealous of Robin Pierce, who had even once said that he almost wished his wife were an ugly woman.

The Grand Turk nature within him, if not actually dead, was certainly in abeyance. He was so intent on his own affairs that he paid no heed at all to his wife's, even when they might be said to be also his. Leo Ulford was becoming difficult to manage, and Lord Holme still gaily went his way. As Lady Holme thought over Sir Donald's words she felt a crushing weight of depression sink down upon her. The brougham rolled smoothly on through the lighted streets. She did not glance out of the windows, or notice the passing crowds. In the silence and darkness of her own soul she was trying not to feel, trying to think.

A longing to be incautious, to do something startling, desperate, came to her.

It was evident that Mrs. Ulford had been complaining to Sir Donald about his son's conduct. With whom? Lady Holme could not doubt that it was with herself. She had read, with one glance at the fluttering pink eyelids, the story of the Leo Ulford's _menage_. Now, she was not preoccupied with any regret for her own cruelty or for another woman's misery. The egoism spoken of by Carey was not dead in her yet, but very much alive. As she sat in the corner of the brougham, pressing herself against the padded wall, she was angry for herself, pitiful for herself.

And she was jealous--horribly jealous. That woke up her imagination, all the intensity of her. Where was Fritz to-night? She did not know.

Suddenly the dense ignorance in which every human being lives, and must live to the end of time, towered above her like a figure in a nightmare.

What do we know, what can we ever know of each other? In each human being dwells the most terrible, the most ruthless power that exists--the power of silence.

Fritz had that power; stupid, blundering, self-contented Fritz.

She pulled the check-string and gave the order, "Home!"

In her present condition she felt unable to go into Society.

When she got to Cadogan Square she said to the footman who opened the door:

"His lordship isn't in yet?"

"No, my lady."

"Did he say what time he would be in to-night?"

"No, my lady."

The man paused, then added:

"His lordship told Mr. Lucas not to wait up."

"Mr. Lucas" was Lord Holme's valet.

It seemed to Lady Holme as if there were a significant, even a slightly mocking, sound in the footman's voice. She stared at him. He was a thin, swarthy young man, with lantern jaws and a very long, pale chin. When she looked at him he dropped his eyes.

"Bring me some lemonade to the drawing-room in ten minutes," she said.

"Yes, my lady."

"In ten minutes, not before. Turn on all the lights in the drawing-room."

"Yes, my lady."

The man went before her up the staircase, turned on the lights, stood aside to let her pass and then went softly down. Lady Holme rang for Josephine.

"Take my cloak and then go to bed," she said.

Josephine took the cloak and went out, shutting the door.

"Ten minutes!" Lady Holme said to herself.

She sat down on the sofa on which she had sat for a moment alone after her song at the dinner-party, the song murdered by Miss Filberte. The empty, brilliantly-lit rooms seemed unusually large. She glanced round them with inward-looking eyes. Here she was at midnight sitting quite alone in her own house. And she wished to do something decisive, startling as the cannon shot sometimes fired from a ship to disperse a fog wreath. That was the reason why she had told the footman to come in ten minutes. She thought that in ten minutes she might make up her mind.

If she decided upon doing something that required an emissary the man would be there.

She looked at the little silver box she had taken up that night when she was angry, then at the grand piano in the further room. The two things suggested to her two women--the woman of hot temper and the woman of sweetness and romance. What was she to-night, and what was she going to do? Nothing, probably. What could she do? Again she glanced round the rooms. It seemed to her that she was like an actress in an intense, passionate _role_, who is paralysed by what is called in the theatre "a stage wait." She ought to play a tremendous scene, now, at once, but the person with whom she was to play it did not come on to the stage. She had worked herself up for the scene. The emotion, the passion, the force, the fury were alive, were red hot within her, and she could not set them free. She remained alone upon the stage in a sort of horror of dumbness, a horror of inaction.

The footman came in quietly with the lemonade on a tray. He put it down on a table by Lady Holme.

"Is there anything else, my lady?"

She supposed that the question was meant as a very discreet hint to her that the man would be glad to go to bed. For a moment she did not reply, but kept him waiting. She was thinking rapidly, considering whether she would do the desperate thing or not, whether she would summon one of the actors for the violent scene her nature demanded persistently that night.

After the opera she had been due at a ball to which Leo Ulford was going. She had promised to go in to supper with him and to arrive by a certain hour. He was wondering, waiting, now, at this moment. She knew that. The house was in Eaton Square, not far off. Should she send the footman with a note to Leo, saying that she was too tired to come to the ball but that she was sitting up at home? That was what she was rapidly considering while the footman stood waiting. Leo would come, and then--presently--Lord Holme would come. And then? Then doubtless would happen the scene she longed for, longed for with a sort of almost crazy desire such as she had never felt before.

She glanced up and saw an astonished expression upon the footman's pale face. How long had she kept him there waiting? She had no idea.

"There is nothing else," she said slowly.

She paused, then added, reluctantly:

"You can go to bed."

The man went softly out of the room. As he shut the door she breathed a deep sigh, that was almost a sob. So difficult had she found it to govern herself, not to do the crazy thing.

She poured out the lemonade and put ice into it.

As she did so she made grimaces, absurd grimaces of pain and misery, like those on the faces of the two women in Mantegna's picture of Christ and the Marys in the Brera at Milan. They are grotesque, yet wonderfully moving in their pitiless realism. But tears fall from the eyes of Mantegna's women and no tears fell from Lady Holme's eyes. Still making grimaces, she sipped the lemonade. Then she put down the glass, leaned back on the sofa and shut her eyes. Her face ceased to move, and became beautiful again in its stillness. She remained motionless for a long time, trying to obtain the mastery over herself. In act she had obtained it already, but not in emotion. Indeed, the relinquishing of violence, the sending of the footman to bed, seemed to have increased the passion within her. And now she felt it rising till she was afraid of being herself, afraid of being this solitary woman, feeling intensely and able to do nothing. It seemed to her as if such a passion of jealousy, and desire for immediate expression of it in action, as flamed within her, must wreak disaster upon her like some fell disease, as if she were in immediate danger, even in immediate physical danger. She lay still like one determined to meet it bravely, without flinching, without a sign of cowardice.

But suddenly she felt that she had made a mistake in dismissing the footman, that the pain of inaction was too great for her to bear. She could not just--do nothing. She could not, and she got up swiftly and rang the bell. The man did not return. She pressed the bell again. After three or four minutes he came in, looking rather flushed and put out.

"I want you to take a note to Eaton Square," she said. "It will be ready in five minutes."

"Yes, my lady."

She went to her writing table and wrote this note to Leo Ulford:

"DEAR MR. ULFORD,--I am grieved to play you false, but I am too tired to-night to come on. Probably you are amusing yourself. I am sitting here alone over such a dull book. One can't go to bed at twelve, somehow, even if one is tired. The habit of the season's against early hours and one couldn't sleep. Be nice and come in for five minutes on your way home, and tell me all about it. I know you pass the end of the square, so it won't be out of your way.--Yours very sincerely, V. H."