"D'you mean you've always known she was mimickin' you?"

"Of course. From the very start."

His face got redder.

"I'll teach her to let my wife alone," he muttered. "To dare--my wife!"

"I'm afraid it's a little late in the day to begin now," Lady Holme said. "Society's been laughing over it, and your apparent appreciation of it, the best part of the season."

"My what?"

"Your apparent enjoyment of the performance."

And then she went quietly out of the room and shut the door gently behind her. But directly the door was shut she became another woman. Her mouth was distorted, her eyes shone, she rushed upstairs to her bedroom, locked herself in, threw herself down on the bed and pressed her face furiously against the coverlet.

The fact that she had spoken at last to her husband of the insult she had been silently enduring, the insult he had made so far more bitter than it need have been by his conduct, had broken down something within her, some wall of pride behind which had long been gathering a flood of feeling. She cried now frantically, with a sort of despairing rage, cried and crushed herself against the bed, beating the pillows with her hands, grinding her teeth.

What was the use of it all? What was the use of being beautiful, of being young, rich? What was the use of having married a man she had loved? What was the use? What was the use?

"What's the use?" she sobbed the words out again and again.

For the man was a fool, Fritz was a fool. She thought of him at that moment as half-witted. For he saw nothing, nothing. He was a blind man led by his animal passions, and when at last he was forced to see, when she came and, as it were, lifted his eyelids with her fingers, and said to him, "Look! Look at what has been done to me!" he could only be angry for himself, because the insult had attained him, because she happened to be his wife. It seemed to her, while she was crying there, that stupidity combined with egoism must have the power to kill even that vital, enduring thing, a woman's love. She had begun to idealise Fritz, but how could she go on idealising him? And she began for the first time really to understand--or to begin to understand--that there actually was something within her which was hungry, unsatisfied, something which was not animal but mental, or was it spiritual?--something not sensual, not cerebral, which cried aloud for sustenance. And this something did not, could never, cry to Fritz. It knew he could not give it what it wanted.

Then to whom did it cry? She did not know.

Presently she grew calmer and sat upon the bed, looking straight before her. Her mind returned upon itself. She seemed to go back to that point of time, just before Lady Cardington called, when she had the programme in her hand and thought of the gossamer threads that were as iron in her life, and in such lives as hers; then to move on to that other point of time when she laid down the programme, sighed, and was conscious of a violent desire for release, for something to come and lift a powerful hand and brush away the spider's web.

But now, returning to this further moment in her life, she asked herself what would be left to her if the spider's web were gone? The believers in the angel? Perhaps she no longer included Fritz among them. The impotence of his mind seemed to her an impotence of heart just then. He was to her like a numbed creature, incapable of movement, incapable of thought, incapable of belief. Credulity--yes, but not belief. And so, when she looked at the believers, she saw but a few people: Robin Pierce, Sir Donald--whom else?

And then she heard, as if far off, the song she would sing on the morrow at Manchester House.

"Torna in fior di giovinezza Isaotta Blanzesmano, Dice: Tutto al mondo a vano: Nell'amore ogni dolcezza."

And then she cried again, but no longer frantically; quietly, with a sort of childish despair and confusion. In her heart there had opened a dark space, a gulf. She peered into it and heard, deep down in it, hollow echoes resounding, and she recoiled from a vision of emptiness.

On the following day Fritz drove her himself to Manchester House in a new motor he had recently bought. All the morning he had stayed at home and fidgeted about the house. It was obvious to his wife that he was in an unusually distracted frame of mind. He wanted to tell her something, yet could not do so. She saw that plainly, and she felt almost certain that since their interview of the previous day he had seen Miss Schley.

She fancied that there had been a scene of some kind between them, and she guessed that Fritz had been hopelessly worsted in it and was very sorry for himself. There was a beaten look in his face, a very different look from that which had startled her when he came into her room after thrashing Leo Ulford. This time, however, her curiosity was not awake, and the fact that it was not awake marked a change in her. She felt to-day as if she did not care what Fritz had been doing or was going to do. She had suffered, she had concealed her suffering, she had tried vulgarly to pay Fritz out, she had failed. At the critical moment she had played the woman after he had played the man. He had thrashed the intruder whom she was using as a weapon, and she had bathed his wounds, made much of him, idealised him. She had done what any uneducated street woman would have done for "her man." And now she had suddenly come to feel as if there had always been an emptiness in her life, as if Fritz never had, never could fill it. The abruptness of the onset of this new feeling confused her. She did not know that a woman could be subject to a change of this kind. She did not understand it, realise what it portended, what would result from it. But she felt that, for the moment, at any rate, she could not get up any excitement about Fritz, his feelings, his doings. Whenever she thought of him she thought of his blundering stupidity, his blindness, sensuality and egoism. No doubt she loved him. Only, to-day, she did not feel as if she loved him or anyone.

Yet she did not feel dull. On the contrary, she was highly strung, unusually sensitive. What she was most acutely conscious of was a sensation of lonely excitement, of solitary expectation. Fritz fidgeted about the house, and the fact that he did so gave her no more concern than if a little dog had been running to and fro. She did not want him to tell her what was the matter. On the other hand, she did want him not to tell her. Simply she did not care.

He said nothing. Perhaps something in her look, her manner, kept him dumb.

When they were in the motor on the way to Manchester House, he said:

"I bet you'll cut out everybody."

"Oh, there are all sorts of stars."

"Well, mind you put 'em all out."

It was evident to her that for some reason or other he was particularly anxious she should shine that afternoon. She meant to. She knew she was going to. But she had no desire to shine in order to gratify Fritz's egoism. Probably he had just had a quarrel with Miss Schley and wanted to punish her through his wife. The idea was not a pretty one.

Unfortunately that circumstance did not ensure its not being a true one.

"Mind you do, eh?" reiterated her husband, giving the steering wheel a twist and turning the car up Hamilton Place.

"I shall try to sing well, naturally," she replied coldly. "I always do."

"Of course--I know."

There was something almost servile in his manner, an anxiety which was quite foreign to it as a rule.

"That's a stunnin' dress," he added. "Keep your cloak well over it."

She said nothing.

"What's the row?" he asked. "Anythin' up?"

"I'm thinking over my songs."

"Oh, I see."

She had silenced him for the moment.

Very soon they were in a long line of carriages and motors moving slowly towards Manchester House.

"Goin' to be a deuce of a crowd," said Fritz.

"Naturally."

"Wonder who'll be there?"

"Everybody who's still in town."

She bowed to a man in a hansom.

"Who's that?"

"Plancon. He's singing."

"How long'll it be before you come on?"

"Quite an hour, I think."

"Better than bein' first, isn't it?"

"Of course."