ANABEL (after a pause).  Yet I feel hope—­don’t you?

OLIVER.  Yes, sometimes.

ANABEL.  It seemed to me, especially that winter in Norway,—­I can hardly express it,—­as if any moment life might give way under one, like thin ice, and one would be more than dead.  And then I knew my only hope was here—­the only hope.

OLIVER.  Yes, I believe it.  And I believe—–­

(Enter MRS. BARLOW.)

MRS. BARLOW.  Oh, I wanted to speak to you, Oliver.

OLIVER.  Shall I come across?

MRS. BARLOW.  No, not now.  I believe father is coming here with
Gerald.

OLIVER.  Is he going to walk so far?

MRS. BARLOW.  He will do it.—­I suppose you know Oliver?

ANABEL.  Yes, we have met before.

MRS. BARLOW (to OLIVER).  You didn’t mention it.  Where have you met
Miss Wrath?  She’s been about the world, I believe.

ANABEL.  About the world?—­no, Mrs. Barlow.  If one happens to know
Paris and London—–­

MRS. BARLOW.  Paris and London!  Well, I don’t say you are all together an adventuress.  My husband seems very pleased with you—­ for Winifred’s sake, I suppose—­and he’s wrapped up in Winifred.

ANABEL.  Winifred is an artist.

MRS. BARLOW.  All my children have the artist in them.  They get it from my family.  My father went mad in Rome.  My family is born with a black fate—­they all inherit it.

OLIVER.  I believe one is master of one’s fate sometimes, Mrs. Barlow. 
There are moments of pure choice.

MRS. BARLOW.  Between two ways to the same end, no doubt.  There’s no changing the end.

OLIVER.  I think there is.

MRS. BARLOW.  Yes, you have a parvenu’s presumptuousness somewhere about you.

OLIVER.  Well, better than a blue-blooded fatalism.

MRS. BARLOW.  The fate is in the blood:  you can’t change the blood.

(Enter WINIFRED.)

WINIFRED. Oh, thank you, Oliver, for the wolf and the goat, thank you so much!—­The wolf has sprung on the goat, Miss Wrath, and has her by the throat.

ANABEL.  The wolf?

OLIVER.  It’s a little marble group—­Italian—­in hard marble.

WINIFRED. The wolf—­I love the wolf—­he pounces so beautifully.  His backbone is so terribly fierce.  I don’t feel a bit sorry for the goat, somehow.

OLIVER.  I didn’t.  She is too much like the wrong sort of clergyman.

WINIFRED. Yes—­such a stiff, long face.  I wish he’d kill her.

MRS. BARLOW.  There’s a wish!

WINIFRED. Father and Gerald are coming.  That’s them, I suppose.

(Enter MR. BARLOW and GERALD.)

MR. BARLOW.  Ah, good morning—­good morning—­quite a little gathering! 
Ah—–­