All of his girl’s loving soul flew to her mother; and naturally:  She would not be harsh on her father.  She would say he loved!  And true:  he did love, he does love; loves no woman but the dear mother.

He flicked a short wring of the hand having taken pressure from an alien woman’s before Fredi pressed it, and absolved himself in the act; thinking, How little does a woman know how true we can be to her when we smell at a flower here and there!—­There they are, stationary; women the flowers, we the bee; and we are faithful in our seeming volatility; faithful to the hive!—­And if women are to be stationary, the reasoning is not so bad.  Funny, however, if they here and there imitatively spread a wing, and treat men in that way?  It is a breach of the convention; we pay them our homage, that they may serve as flowers, not to be volatile tempters.  Nataly never had been one of the sort:  Lady Grace was.  No necessity existed for compelling the world to bow to Lady Grace, while on behalf of his Nataly he had to . . .  Victor closed the curtain over a gulf-revealed by an invocation of Nature, and showing the tremendous force he partook of so largely, in her motive elements of the devourer.  Horrid to behold, when we need a gracious presentation of the circumstances.  She is a splendid power for as long as we confine her between the banks:  but she has a passion to discover cracks; and if we give her headway, she will find one, and drive at it, and be through, uproarious in her primitive licentiousness, unless we labour body and soul like Dutchmen at the dam.  Here she was, and not desired, almost detested!  Nature detested!  It had come about through the battle for Nataly; chiefly through Mrs. Burman’s tenacious hold of the filmy thread she took for life and was enabled to use as a means for the perversion besides bar to the happiness of creatures really living.  We may well marvel at the Fates, and tell them they are not moral agents!

Victor’s reflections came across Colney Durance, who tripped and stopped them.

Dressed with his customary celerity, he waited for Nesta, to show her the lighted grand double drawing-room:  a further proof of how Fortune favoured him:  she was to be told, how he one day expressed a wish for greater space, and was informed on the next, that the neighbour house was being vacated, and the day following he was in treaty for the purchase of it; returning from Tyrol, he found his place habitable.

Nesta came.  Her short look at him was fond, her voice not faltering; she laid her hand under his arm and walked round the spacious room, praising the general design, admiring the porcelain, the ferns, friezes, hangings, and the grand piano, the ebony inlaid music-stands, the firegrates and plaques, the ottomans, the tone of neutral colour that, as in sound, muted splendour.  He told her it was a reception night, with music:  and added:  ‘I miss my . . . seen anybody lately?’