she might have minded; but now--she cared not what men might do
unto her, for she had her own splendid lover, who could have
knocked all these unhealthy undergraduates into a cocked-hat. She
dared not tell Gerald a word of what had happened: he might have
come up from wherever he was and half killed Ansell. And she
determined not to tell her brother either, for her nature was
kindly, and it pleased her to pass things over.

She took off her gloves, and then she took off her ear-rings and
began to admire them. These ear-rings were a freak of hers--her
only freak. She had always wanted some, and the day Gerald asked
her to marry him she went to a shop and had her ears pierced. In
some wonderful way she knew that it was right. And he had given
her the rings--little gold knobs, copied, the jeweller told them,
from something prehistoric and he had kissed the spots of blood
on her handkerchief. Herbert, as usual, had been shocked.

"I can't help it," she cried, springing up. "I'm not like other
girls." She began to pace about Rickie's room, for she hated to
keep quiet. There was nothing much to see in it. The pictures
were not attractive, nor did they attract her--school groups,
Watts' "Sir Percival," a dog running after a rabbit, a man
running after a maid, a cheap brown Madonna in a cheap green
frame--in short, a collection where one mediocrity was generally
cancelled by another. Over the door there hung a long photograph
of a city with waterways, which Agnes, who had never been to
Venice, took to be Venice, but which people who had been to
Stockholm knew to be Stockholm. Rickie's mother, looking rather
sweet, was standing on the mantelpiece. Some more pictures had
just arrived from the framers and were leaning with their faces