"What have I been doing to deserve this?"

Concepcion replied, still looking into the fire: "As far as I can gather it must be your masterful ways at the Hospital Committee that have impressed her, and especially your unheard-of tyrannical methods with her august mother."

"I see.... Thanks!"

It had not occurred to him that he had treated the Marchioness tyrannically; he treated her like anybody else; he now perceived that this was to treat her tyrannically. His imagination leapt forward as he gazed round the weird and exciting room which Queen had brought into existence for the illustration of herself, and as he pictured the slim, pale figure outside clinging in the night to the vast chimney, and as he listened to the faint intermittent thud of far-off guns. He had a spasm of delicious temptation. He was tempted by Queen's connections and her prospective wealth. If anybody was to possess millions after the war, Queen would one day possess millions. Her family and her innumerable powerful relatives would be compelled to accept him without the slightest reserve, for Queen issued edicts; and through all those big people he would acquire immense prestige and influence, which he could use greatly. Ambition flared up in him—ambition to impress himself on his era. And he reflected with satisfaction on the strangeness of the fact that such an opportunity should have come to him, the son of a lawyer, solely by virtue of his own individuality. He thought of Christine, and poor little Christine was shrunk to nothing at all; she was scarcely even an object of compassion; she was a prostitute.

But far more than by Queen's connections and prospective wealth he was tempted by her youth and beauty; he saw her beautiful and girlish, and he was sexually tempted. Most of all he was tempted by the desire to master her. He saw again the foolish, elegant, brilliant thing on the chimney pretending to defy him and mock at him. And he heard himself commanding sharply: "Come down. Come down and acknowledge your ruler. Come down and be whipped." (For had he not been told that she would like nothing better?) And he heard the West End of London and all the country-houses saying, "She obeys him like a slave." He conceived a new and dazzling environment for himself; and it was undeniable that he needed something of the kind, for he was growing lonely; before the war he had lived intensely in his younger friends, but the war had taken nearly all of them away from him, many of them for ever.

Then he said in a voice almost resentfully satiric, and wondered why such a tone should come from his lips:

"Another of her caprices, no doubt."

"What do you mean—another of her caprices?" said Concepcion, straightening herself and leaning against the mantelpiece.

He had noticed, only a moment earlier, on the mantelpiece, a large photograph of the handsome Molder, with some writing under it.

"Well, what about that, for example?"