"Her natural charm!" Mrs. Gereth could barely articulate. "Am I? Do I strike you so? You know I hate him," Fleda went on.!

Fleda was so far from a wish to triumph that she was absolutely ashamed of having anything to say for herself; but there was one thing, all the same, that not to say was impossible. "That he has done it, that he couldn't not do it, shows how right I was." It settled forever her attitude, and she spoke as if for her own mind; then after a little she added very gently, for Mrs. Gereth's: "That's to say, it shows that he was bound to her by an obligation that, however much he may have wanted to, he couldn't in any sort of honor break." Mrs. Gereth gave a dry, flat laugh. "You're prodigious! But how shall you possibly be more out of it? Owen and I—" She didn't finish her sentence.

"Oh dear, yes!" Owen repeated. "At the West Kensington station—she was going to Victoria. I had walked with her there, and our talk was all on the way." She came out on the platform: everywhere she met the smoke. She covered her face with her hands. "I'll go back."