So, the darkness closed her about; the sickly gas-lamps of the street showing her as a shrouded body.

A girl came in to spread the cloth for dinner, and went through her duties with the stolidity of the London lodging-house maidservant, poking a clogged fire to perdition, and repressing a songful spirit.

Dahlia knew well what was being done; she would have given much to have saved her nostrils from the smell of dinner; it was a great immediate evil to her sickened senses; but she had no energy to call out, nor will of any kind.  The odours floated to her, and passively she combated them.

At first she was nearly vanquished; the meat smelt so acrid, the potatoes so sour; each afflicting vegetable asserted itself peculiarly; and the bread, the salt even, on the wings of her morbid fancy, came steaming about her, subtle, penetrating, thick, and hateful, like the pressure of a cloud out of which disease is shot.

Such it seemed to her, till she could have shrieked; but only a few fresh tears started down her cheeks, and she lay enduring it.

Dead silence and stillness hung over the dinner-service, when the outer door below was opened, and a light foot sprang up the stairs.

There entered a young gentleman in evening dress, with a loose black wrapper drooping from his shoulders.

He looked on the table, and then glancing at the sofa, said: 

“Oh, there she is!” and went to the window and whistled.

After a minute of great patience, he turned his face back to the room again, and commenced tapping his foot on the carpet.

“Well?” he said, finding these indications of exemplary self-command unheeded.  His voice was equally powerless to provoke a sign of animation.  He now displaced his hat, and said, “Dahlia!”

She did not move.

“I am here to very little purpose, then,” he remarked.

A guttering fall of her bosom was perceptible.

“For heaven’s sake, take away that handkerchief, my good child!  Why have you let your dinner get cold?  Here,” he lifted a cover; “here’s roast-beef.  You like it—­why don’t you eat it?  That’s only a small piece of the general inconsistency, I know.  And why haven’t they put champagne on the table for you?  You lose your spirits without it.  If you took it when these moody fits came on—­but there’s no advising a woman to do anything for her own good.  Dahlia, will you do me the favour to speak two or three words with me before I go?  I would have dined here, but I have a man to meet me at the Club.  Of what mortal service is it shamming the insensible?  You’ve produced the required effect, I am as uncomfortable as I need be.  Absolutely!

“Well,” seeing that words were of no avail, he summed up expostulation and reproach in this sigh of resigned philosophy:  “I am going.  Let me see—­I have my Temple keys?—­yes!  I am afraid that even when you are inclined to be gracious and look at me, I shall not, be visible to you for some days.  I start for Lord Elling’s to-morrow morning at five.  I meet my father there by appointment.  I’m afraid we shall have to stay over Christmas.  Good-bye.”  He paused.  “Good-bye, my dear.”