certain amount of the casual and meaningless in his life—since men were made in such a foolish fashion? Why not forgive him his folly, as she did Ronald when he frescoed the wall-paper with ink, in pathetic male ignorance what else to do with himself? … But that woman! She could forgive Basil easily enough, if it were not for the insistent figure of Isabel—her eyes, her mouth, her nervous, seeking hands, her perfumes. … If only it had been a woman she did not know! She turned hot and cold with a desire to rend Isabel limb from limb, to crush her. She remembered women she had seen fighting in the streets in London. Happy world, where people could give their instincts full sway, where one could tell an interloper what one really thought of her! She remembered the last scene in the studio—that look she had given Isabel—with thirsty satisfaction. Isabel knew that she knew—that was something. But Basil must still pay the score that he had heaped up for himself by trying to stand between them—an absurd male buffer between two frank female egotisms which at least did not attempt to deny the obvious. …
She had forgotten Crayven, and she started when he came up to her, his hands full of the vivid indigo-blue and dark-purple flowers of the snow. But she smiled at him warmly and took the gentians with joy in their wonderful colour.
