"Yes," said Lord Henry, "and by the time a woman has her eye on you, she usually has her claws in you as well. You needn't go," he added, as he noticed St. Maur preparing to leave. "But she's an admirable woman. Good taste amounts almost to heroism in these women who battle with age until their very last breath."

Mrs. Delarayne, if anything more regal and more youthful than ever, but certainly showing signs of having taken violent exercise along a chalky thoroughfare, stepped eagerly towards Lord Henry.

"My dear Lord Henry," she began, "so good of you to be in only to me.

But oh, I felt I must see you before leaving town."

She turned and shook hands with St. Maur, and Lord Henry moved an easy chair in her direction.

"Oh, that's right; give me a chair, quick!" she gasped. "I'm broken--broken in body and spirit."

Lord Henry asked the expected question.

"Only this," she said, "that my life soon won't be worth a moment's purchase."

"You are tired," suggested her host. "You don't look after yourself."

"It isn't that," Mrs. Delarayne rejoined. "Nobody takes greater care of themselves than I do. I go to bed every night at ten o'clock precisely, and read until half-past two. What more can I do?"

Lord Henry blinked rapidly, and surveyed her with an air of deep interest. "And you say you are leaving town?" he enquired.

"Yes, I'm taking my family to Brineweald, you know. It is my annual penance, my yearly sacrificial offering to my children. It lasts just six weeks. By the end of it, of course, I am at death's door; but I feel that I can then face the remaining forty-six weeks of gross selfishness with a clean conscience and a brazen face."

"Who's going?"

"Oh, the usual crowd,--my daughters, of course, a friend of theirs, a young Jewess, and perhaps the Fearwell children. The men of the party and my sister Bella will be lodged at Sir Joseph's place, Brineweald Park."

"It sounds engaging enough," said St. Maur.

"Oh, most!" sighed Mrs. Delarayne. "Oh, you can't think what a happy mother I'd be if only I had no children!"

Both men laughed, and Mrs. Delarayne who, ever since her arrival, had been casting unmistakable glances at St. Maur, at last succeeded in silently conveying her meaning to him.

"Well, I'm afraid I must be going downstairs," he said, "I've letters to write."

She extended a hand with alacrity. "Oh, it looks as if I were driving you away," she said.

St. Maur protested feebly against this truthful interpretation of his proposed retreat, and withdrew.

Lord Henry took a seat opposite to his visitor, who was obviously as shy as a schoolgirl in his presence, and surveyed her covertly.

"Have you come to tell me that you have abandoned that absurd Inner Light?" he demanded playfully.

"No, indeed; why should I?" she rejoined with affected indignation.

"It is unpardonable," he murmured.

"Why unpardonable?"

"Had you been a Protestant in the past, it would at least have been comprehensible," he said, "because any kind of absurdity is possible after one has been a Protestant. What after all are all these ridiculous, new-fangled creeds but further schisms of Protestantism? But seeing that you were once a Catholic, I repeat, it is unpardonable."

Mrs. Delarayne purred resentfully, as if to imply that it would require something more than that line of persuasion to convince her of her error.

"What do you do to induce me to abandon anything--however erroneous?"

she protested at last. "It isn't as if you were even remaining in the country. You are going away. But I cannot bear to think of your going away."

Lord Henry folded his hands and scrutinised her for a moment beneath lowered brows. Her manner was unmistakable; she revealed as much of her game as her dignity allowed. His heart softened towards her.

"Is it so much to you that I am going?" he demanded.

"Oh, no," she replied, mock cheerfully, "_le roi est mort, vive le roi!_"

"Haven't you a number of friends?"

"Weighed in the scales, of course," she said, "they represent a tremendous amount of friendship."

"Aren't your daughters an interest?"

"Too adorable, of course,--so adorable that I sometimes wish I'd never been born."

The problem as it presented itself to Lord Henry was rightly: how could this quinquagenarian be given a son whom she could worship? To Mrs.

Delarayne the problem was: how could she induce this young man to overcome the obvious objection consisting in the disparity of their ages? She could read her own nature no further than this.

"Have you never any feelings of loneliness?" she demanded. "Don't you ever reflect upon the happiness you might secure yourself and somebody else by being decently married?"

"I might be tempted to marry. It is perfectly possible," Lord Henry replied. "Hitherto the only thing that has deterred me has been my vanity. It would be so horrible to watch the love a woman might bear me slowly turning to indifference,--for that is what marriage means,--that I don't think I could have the courage to embark upon the undertaking."

"You are flippant," said the widow sadly. "You pipe and joke while Rome is burning."

"One day, of course, I shall have to marry," he muttered, as if to himself.

She would have liked to ask him to Brineweald. She wanted a deep breath of him before he left. For some reason, however, for which she was not too anxious to account, she did not express this wish.

"Why will you _have_ to?" she asked.

"I mean," he said, "simply what I am always repeating in my clinique, that save in the case of those who are really called to celibacy,--the Newmans, the Spencers, and the Nietzsches of this world,--physical and spiritual health is difficult without a normal sexual life."

"Quite so," the widow agreed.

"Quite so," Lord Henry repeated, "a _normal_ sexual life." He emphasised the word "normal," hoping thereby to convey gently how hopeless her scheme was.

"And when will that be?"

"Oh, Heaven knows!"

She rose, went to the window, and there was a pause.

"Lord Henry," she began after a while, "would it seem odd to you? Would you think me shameless? Am I hopelessly abandoned, to tell you now, how very much more than mere friendship, mere gratitude I feel for you?"

He buried his face in his hands and held his breath. He knew this was inevitable; but as he had already told St. Maur, he had a heart.