Fleda came to the sofa in obedience to the impulse to sit down by her; then paused before her while Mrs. Gereth turned up a dead gray mask. A tired old woman sat there with empty hands in her lap. "I've heard nothing," said Fleda. "No answer came." "By Jove, I did—for you! It was only for you."!

"Only last week; it seems a hundred years. We've worked here as fast as we worked there, but I'm not settled yet: you'll see in the rest of the house. However, the worst is over." "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!"

Rather musingly and absently Fleda shook her head. "I don't mind anything." "On the occasion, at papa's, that Mrs. Brigstock told you of, and one day, since then, down at Maggie's." "Because you were closeted with him here so long. You can't pretend at present, you know, not to have any art."