them, she had never been able to resist that final peep, half to see
whether he was there, half to send up a little tiny semi-binding glance
of reconciliation. Sometimes, when he had been very angry with her he
had watched from behind the curtains. To-day, he was at the open window,
waiting to send her the smile which was to obliterate the past
half-hour, the past six months. It was not to be so much a smile as a
look, a benediction.

She got into her taxi. Through the far window she told the driver where
to go. She never glanced behind her, she never glanced up.

He shut the window with a shiver. "The end," he murmured.




X

MISUNDERSTOOD

[_To JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES_]


Her greatness was an accepted fact. Her fame had not been a dashing
offensive but an inevitable advance quietly over-running the world.
People who never read knew her name as well as Napoleon's. There was,
somehow, something a little irreverent about being her contemporary. To
attend the birth of so many masterpieces gave you the feeling of a
legendary past invading the present.