"I don't think she'll do that." "Forever?" Owen gasped.!

"That's what he calls it," said Fleda. "She wanted to know what right you had to meddle. She said you were not honest."

"You've diverged uncommonly far!"—Owen laughed back. Fleda, with her hideous crockery and her father's collections, could conceive that these objects, to her visitor's perception even more strongly than to her own, measured the length of the swing from Poynton and Ricks; she was aware too that her high standards figured vividly enough even to Owen's simplicity to make him reflect that West Kensington was a tremendous fall. If she had fallen it was because she had acted for him. She was all the more content he should thus see she had acted, as the cost of it, in his eyes, was none of her own showing. "What seems to have happened," he exclaimed, "is that you've had a row with her and yet not moved her!" Fleda's surprise at this aberration left her a moment looking at him. "Do you mean your marriage is off?" She stopped again before the bench, and an inspiration came to her. "I should think you would know," she said with proper dignity.