He looked it, too; he seemed the very spirit of contrition, as he sat in the cab, with Anne’s boots on his knees, guarding them with a caressing hand.  But she detected an impenitent brilliance in his eye as he stood in the lamplight and helped her off with the mackintosh which dripped with its passage from the cab to their doorstep.

“I think my feet are wet,” said she.

“There’s a splendid fire in the study,” said he.

He drew up a chair, and made her sit in it, and took off her shoes and stockings, and dried them at the fire.  He held her cold feet in his hands to warm them.  Then he stooped down and laid his face against them and kissed them.  And she heard again his low, tender moan, and took it for a cry of contrition.  He rose from his knees and laid his hand on her shoulder.  She looked up, prepared to receive his chivalrous submission, to gather into her bosom the full harvest of her protest, and then magnanimously forgive.

It was not surrender, certainly not surrender, that she saw in the downward gaze that had drawn her to him.  His eyes were dancing, dancing gaily, to some irresistible measure in his head.

“It was worth while, wasn’t it?” said he.

“What was worth while?”

“Getting your feet wet, for the pleasure of not dining with Gorst?”

There were moments, Anne might have owned, when he did not fail in sympathy and comprehension.  Had she been capable of self-criticism, she would have found that her attitude of protest was a moral luxury, and that moral luxuries were a necessity to natures such as hers.  But Anne had a secret, cherishing eye on martyrdom, and it was intolerable to her to be reminded in this way that, after all, she was only a spiritual voluptuary.

Still more intolerable was the large indulgence of her husband’s manner.  He seemed positively to pander to her curious passion, while preserving an attitude of superior purity.  He multiplied her opportunities.  A week had hardly passed before Mr. Gorst dined in Prior Street again, and Anne again took refuge in Thurston Square.

This time Majendie made no comment on her action.  He seemed to take it for granted.

But Anne, standing up heroically for her principle, was sustained by a sense of moving in a divine combat.  Every time she dined in Thurston Square, she felt that she had thrown down her gage; every time that Majendie invited Gorst, she felt that he stooped to pick it up.  Thus unconsciously she breathed hostility, and was suspicious of hostility in him.

When she announced, at breakfast one Monday, that she had asked the Eliotts, the Gardners, Canon Wharton, and Miss Proctor, for dinner on Wednesday, she uttered each name as if it had been a challenge, and looked for some irritating maneuver in response.  He would, of course, proclaim that he was going to dine with the Hannays, or he would effect a retreat to Mr. Gorst’s rooms, or to his club.