brain—­purposely—­with ambitious ideas.  He had done it when she was very young, because he had not long to stay; and he had overcoloured the pictures in order that the impression should be vivid and indelible when he was gone.  He had meant to bless, for, to his mind, to shine, to do big things, to achieve notoriety, to attain power, “to make the band play when you come,” was the true philosophy of life.  And as this philosophy, successful in his case, was accompanied by habits of life which would bear the closest inspection by the dean and chapter, it was a difficult one to meet by argument or admonition.  He had taught his grandchild as successfully as he had built the structure of his success.  He had made material things the basis of life’s philosophy and purpose; and if she was not wholly materialistic, it was because she had drunk deep, for one so young, at the fountains of art, poetry, sculpture and history.  For the last she had a passion which was represented by books of biography without number, and all the standard historians were to be found in her bedroom and her boudoir.  Yet, too, when she had opportunity—­when Lady Tynemouth brought them to her—­she read the newest and most daring productions of a school of French novelists and dramatists who saw the world with eyes morally astigmatic and out of focus.  Once she had remarked to Alice Tynemouth: 

“You say I dress well, yet it isn’t I. It’s my dressmaker.  I choose the over-coloured thing three times out of five—­it used to be more than that.  Instinctively I want to blaze.  It is the same in everything.  I need to be kept down, but, alas!  I have my own way in everything.  I wish I hadn’t, for my own good.  Yet I can’t brook being ruled.”

To this Alice had replied:  “A really selfish husband—­not a difficult thing to find—­would soon keep you down sufficiently.  Then you’d choose the over-coloured thing not more than two times, perhaps one time, out of five.  Your orientalism is only undisciplined self-will.  A little cruelty would give you a better sense of proportion in colour—­and everything else.  You have orientalism, but little or no orientation.”

Here, now, standing before the fire, was that possible husband who, no doubt, was selfish, and had capacities for cruelty which would give her greater proportion—­and sense of colour.  In Byng’s palace, with three millions behind her—­she herself had only the tenth of one million—­she could settle down into an exquisitely ordered, beautiful, perfect life where the world would come as to a court, and—­

Suddenly she shuddered, for these thoughts were sordid, humiliating, and degrading.  They were unbidden, but still they came.  They came from some dark fountain within herself.  She really wanted—­her idealistic self wanted—­to be all that she knew she looked, a flower in life and thought.  But, oh, it was hard, hard for her to be what she wished!  Why should it be so hard for her?