The woman did not look too gay, for she was tired; and from the tall houses no one threw her down coppers.  She moved the organ on, and three doors off began again.

It was the waltz they had played at Roger’s when Irene had danced with Bosinney; and the perfume of the gardenias she had worn came back to Soames, drifted by the malicious music, as it had been drifted to him then, when she passed, her hair glistening, her eyes so soft, drawing Bosinney on and on down an endless ballroom.

The organ woman plied her handle slowly; she had been grinding her tune all day-grinding it in Sloane Street hard by, grinding it perhaps to Bosinney himself.

Soames turned, took a cigarette from the carven box, and walked back to the window.  The tune had mesmerized him, and there came into his view Irene, her sunshade furled, hastening homewards down the Square, in a soft, rose-coloured blouse with drooping sleeves, that he did not know.  She stopped before the organ, took out her purse, and gave the woman money.

Soames shrank back and stood where he could see into the hall.

She came in with her latch-key, put down her sunshade, and stood looking at herself in the glass.  Her cheeks were flushed as if the sun had burned them; her lips were parted in a smile.  She stretched her arms out as though to embrace herself, with a laugh that for all the world was like a sob.

Soames stepped forward.

“Very-pretty!” he said.

But as though shot she spun round, and would have passed him up the stairs.  He barred the way.

“Why such a hurry?” he said, and his eyes fastened on a curl of hair fallen loose across her ear....

He hardly recognised her.  She seemed on fire, so deep and rich the colour of her cheeks, her eyes, her lips, and of the unusual blouse she wore.

She put up her hand and smoothed back the curl.  She was breathing fast and deep, as though she had been running, and with every breath perfume seemed to come from her hair, and from her body, like perfume from an opening flower.

“I don’t like that blouse,” he said slowly, “it’s a soft, shapeless thing!”

He lifted his finger towards her breast, but she dashed his hand aside.

“Don’t touch me!” she cried.

He caught her wrist; she wrenched it away.

“And where may you have been?” he asked.

“In heaven—­out of this house!” With those words she fled upstairs.

Outside—­in thanksgiving—­at the very door, the organ-grinder was playing the waltz.

And Soames stood motionless.  What prevented him from following her?

Was it that, with the eyes of faith, he saw Bosinney looking down from that high window in Sloane Street, straining his eyes for yet another glimpse of Irene’s vanished figure, cooling his flushed face, dreaming of the moment when she flung herself on his breast—­the scent of her still in the air around, and the sound of her laugh that was like a sob?