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Rh the present Empress behaved like that we probably should be. Yes, darling, I am coming to the point. The fact that we accept Catherine of Russia—who is real life, by the way—and Othello shows that we do not really demand morals from art, and we are squeamish only when the characters talk our own language, and wear the clothes of the day. 'La Rouille,' for instance, is not nearly so corrupt as 'Othello'"

And so forth, with apparently complete success. Edgar grew animated over it. Lucia was animated already. But the success was superficial: she had but put a layer of paint over a crack that went down into the centre of the machinery of life; and when, half an hour later, they came in and parted with a little secret hand-pressing, he to his room to read the prophetic works of Blake, she to rest a little before dressing, each sat silent for a while, and Edgar's page was long unturned, and Lucia looked at the little sparkle of fire that she had lit in her bedroom without much thought of rest. Utterly as he had yielded, genuinely as he had owned himself shameful, to him mysterious characters, like the writing on the wall, began to show themselves again. Lucia had been perfectly reasonable—yes, yes, in her explanation—but her original words had borne a far more obvious interpretation. But it would not do to think of that; he was wrong about it; no doubt he was wrong about it. He must dismiss it altogether; it must leave his mind.

It left the surface of his mind, but it did not leave his mind. It sank, instead, so deep down that for the present it was out of sight.

And Lucia looked at her fire. Certain words of Madge Heron's came back to her mind. "You must settle if your string is to be black or white; are you going to be good or to be bad?"

She had done a deplorably mean thing that afternoon, and she knew it. She had, by accident, shown Edgar a bit of her real self, and it had shocked him intolerably. Then, so to speak, she had quickly put a sort of distorting mirror in front of him, herself crouching behind it, so that he might not see her, but a deformed image of himself. When he was sufficiently disgusted with it, she had dexterously tweaked it away, and again shown him herself, smiling, generous, forgiving. It was not nice, but it was clever. He had not an idea how this wonderful conjuring feat was done. It had completely taken him in. But it was necessary to take him in; there would have been ruin otherwise. And if somewhere deep down in her a little voice—conscience, perhaps, or the voice of God—said,