He peeped in.  It was dark.  Sensible of presences, he gradually discerned a thick blot along the couch to the right of the door, and he drew near.  Two were lying folded together; mother and daughter.  He bent over them.  His hand was taken and pressed by Fredi’s; she spoke; she said tenderly:  ‘Father.’  Neither of the two made a movement.  He heard the shivering rise of a sob, that fell.  The dry sob going to the waste breath was Nataly’s.  His girl did not speak again.

He left them.  He had no thought until he stood in his dressing-room, when he said ‘Good!’ For those two must have been lying folded together during the greater part of the day:  and it meant, that the mother’s heart had opened; the girl knew.  Her tone:  ‘Father,’ sweet, was heavy, too, with the darkness it came out of.

So she knew.  Good.  He clasped them both in his heart; tempering his pity of those dear ones with the thought, that they were of the sex which finds enjoyment in a day of the mutual tear; and envying them; he strained at a richness appearing in the sobs of their close union.

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!