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290 to-night she felt there would be no more withering of her laugh in mid-air, no lopped and maimed sentences. The joy of life had come back to her, the rage for love and living.

"Dear Mouse," she said, when she found her in her bedroom, "Edgar is too tiresome and worrying for words. Having carefully settled to start on Saturday, he now proposes to start on Friday. What am I to do?"

Mouse drew another chair up to the fire; it was a frosty evening, and the exhilaration of the cold had entered into the blaze. Exhilaration too, so she thought, had entered into Lucia, in spite of this tiresome proposal.

"Do?" she said. "Don't." It is a woman's prerogative to change her plans at the last moment, not a man's. It seems to me that men are invading our provinces. They have headaches and drink tea. Don't go, Lucia. Be calm and firm."

"But I'm not; I'm furious. He really must think he is Providence, upsetting things in this way.'

"Shall I telegraph to him?" asked Mouse. "I will, with pleasure, just saying that if necessary you shall be kept here by force."

Lucia laughed.

"I wish you could," she said, "but Edgar wouldn't see that you Were serious. He would think it was a joke. How annoying he is! But you must remember that I have to spend a fortnight all alone with him on the yacht. If I simply refused to go a day earlier he would be so very polite and dignified, which I can't stand. I abhor dignity."

"Well, it all depends, then, on what you abhor most," said Mouse, "dignity or having your arrangements upset."

Lucia poked the fire viciously.

"Oh, dignity is the worst," she said. "I shall do as he wishes. It's so unfair, though, for unless I do it with the best grace in the world, it will be as bad as not doing it at all. Yes, I shall do it, and pretend it suits me perfectly. No one can say that I don't do my duty. What an angel was born into this malicious world twenty-five years ago! Sometimes I am so good that I am almost afraid I shall die in the night."

"Oh, be very careful," said Mouse. "But, really, you are too amiable. You will have to leave us on Thursday, then? Edgar's Grosvenor Hotel plans are quite too funny for anything. I