one who yields to a temptation, she came into the room. He felt strangely
happy, and, drawing over an arm-chair for her, he threw himself on the
couch. He noticed that she wore a loose white jacket, and once during the
reading of the act he was conscious of a beautiful hand hanging over the
rail of the chair. Sometimes, in an exciting passage, the hands were
clasped. The black slippers and the slender black-stockinged ankles showed
beneath the skirt; and when he raised his eyes from the manuscript, he saw
the blonde face and hair, and the pale eyes were always fixed upon him. She
listened with a keen and penetrating interest to his criticism of the act,
agreeing with him generally, sometimes quietly contesting a point, and with
some strange fascination drawing new and unexpected ideas from him; and in
the intellectual warmth of her femininity his brain seemed to clear and his
ideas took new shape.

'Ah,' he said, after two hours' delightful talk, 'how much I'm indebted to
you! At last I see my mistakes; in two days I shall have written the act.
And he wrote rapidly for nearly two hours, reconstructing the opening
scenes of his second act.' He then threw himself on the couch, smoked a
cigar, and after half an hour's rest continued writing till dinner-time.

When he came down-stairs, the thought of what he had been writing was still
so vivid in him that he did not notice at once the silence of those with
whom he was dining. He complimented Mrs. Bentley on the freshness of the
turbot; she hardly answered; and then he became aware that something had
gone wrong. What? Only one thing was possible. Emily had heard that Mrs.
Bentley had been in his study. Looking from the woman to the girl, he saw
that the latter had been weeping. She was still in a highly hysterical
state, and might burst into tears and fly from the dinner-table at any
moment. His face changed expression, and it was with difficulty that he
restrained his temper. His life had been made up of a constant recurrence