“It’s rather dull for you, isn’t it?”

She made no reply until Portlaw had gone upstairs; then looking around at him: 

“Is there any necessity for me to sit here while you play cards this evening?”

“No, if it doesn’t amuse you.”

Amuse her!  She rested her elbow on the window ledge, and, chin on hand, stared out into the gray world of rain—­the world that had been so terribly altered for her for ever.  In the room shadows were gathering; the dull light faded.  Outside it rained over land and water, over the encircling forest which walled in this stretch of spectral world where the monotony of her days was spent.

To the sadness of it she was slowly becoming inured; but the strangeness of her life she could not yet comprehend—­its meaningless days and nights, its dragging hours—­and the strange people around her immersed in their sordid pleasures—­this woman—­her husband’s sister, thin-lipped, hard-featured, drinking, smoking, gambling, shrill in disputes, merciless of speech, venomously curious concerning all that she held locked in the privacy of her wretchedness.

“Shiela,” he said, “why don’t you pay your family a visit?”

She shook her head.

“You’re afraid they might suspect that you are not particularly happy?”

“Yes....  It was wrong to have Gray and Cecile here.  It was fortunate you were away.  But they saw the Tressilvains.”

“What did they think of ’em?” inquired Malcourt.

“What do you suppose they would think?”

“Quite right.  Well, don’t worry.  Hold out a little longer.  This is a ghastly sort of pantomime for you, but there’s always a grand transformation scene at the end.  Who knows how soon the curtain will rise on fairyland and the happy lovers and all that bright and sparkling business?  Children demand it—­must have it....  And you are very young yet.”

He laughed, seeing her perplexed expression.

“You don’t know what I mean, do you?  Listen, Shiela; stay here to dinner, if you can stand my relatives.  We won’t play cards.  You’ll really find it amusing I think.”

“Do you wish me to stay?”

“Yes, I do.  I want you to see something.”

A few moments afterward she took her umbrella and waterproof and went away to dress, returning to a dinner-table remarkable for the silence of the diners.  Something, too, had gone wrong with the electric plant, and after dinner candles were lighted in the living-room.  Outside it rained heavily.

Malcourt sat beside his wife, smoking, and, unaided, sustaining what conversation there was; and after a while he rose, dragged a heavy, solid wooden table to the middle of the room, placed five chairs around it, and smilingly invited Shiela, the Tressilvains, and Portlaw to join him.

“A seance in table-tipping?” asked his sister coldly.  “Really, Louis, I think we are rather past such things.”