On the day after this conversation Clytie was surprised by an announcement from Durdleham that Mrs. Blather and Janet were suddenly coming to town and would avail themselves of her often repeated invitation to pay her a visit in her new home. Janet had been ailing for some time past. The over-refined Davenant blood had never been vivifying at any time, and now, as there were sudden dangers of a grave kind, their Durdleham doctor had advised her consulting a London specialist. They hurried to catch the great man before he left for his summer holidays. That was their apology to Clytie for the shortness of their notice. Ordinarily on their rare visits to town they put up at Durfey's Hotel in Albany Street. Their father and grandfather had put up there from time immemorial, and they spoke of Durfey's with solemn familiarity, as if it were the one hotel of London. On this occasion, however, they came and stayed with Clytie.

Their presence in the house was a relief to her, even though it was by way of counter-irritation. Thornton showed himself in the light of a charming host and delighted his sisters-in-law. They could not find enough felicitations to bestow upon Clytie. They forgot the old misunderstandings, took it for granted that Clytie had finally settled, was happy, without any ulterior desires. They went round the house, Mrs. Blather manifesting mild enthusiasm over the more solid arrangements in the way of furniture and domestic appurtenances, Janet going into little ecstasies over the decorations.

“I never thought you had such a talent for house management,” said Mrs. Blather after an inspection of the linen-cupboards and china-closets.

“I hardly think it requires absolute genius,” replied Clytie, “to see that sheets are folded up properly and that plates are not put away dirty.”

“Ah!” said her sister, with a philosophic sigh. “So many young wives are so inexperienced.”

It was a delight to Mrs. Blather to see Clytie in this aspect. She could talk to her now on common ground; Clytie had become an ordinary sensible woman, who could discuss the things that fill the ordinary sensible woman's life: housemaids, fancywork, and the price of fish. Mrs. Blather knew that Hammerdyke was fairly well off, but she thought it her duty to give Clytie many valuable hints as to household expenditure, to which Clytie listened with suave distraction. She also gave her recipes for cooking, and the washing of lace, and infallible methods for removing wine stains from tablecloths; also neat little formulas for the management of a husband.

“But yours is simply perfect,” she added, with reference to this last. “Oh, Clytie, you are a lucky girl!”

To Clytie there was something pathetically humorous in the aspect she presented to her sisters; in finding herself, for the first time in her life, perfect in their eyes; in their changed relations. It was amusing to be the lady of the house, and to make plans for Gracie and Janet's entertainment. She brightened under the sense of it, and though many a misconception on their part caused her a sharp twinge of pain, she allowed them to purr on contentedly, taking a small measure of enjoyment from the comfort thereof. Besides, she felt that it would not last long. Their stay was limited to three days. A week of it would have been intolerable. For this reason she declined to accompany them back to Durdleham. At first Mrs. Blather was rather hurt at her refusal; but Clytie gently smoothed over the matter, tactfully avoiding to give specific reasons.

Although Thornton was amenity itself in his intercourse with Clytie when they met in her sisters' presence, in their private relations he showed a certain soreness—the result of the process of understanding. She tried to heal this, to win back from him, if not love, at least gentleness and courtesy.

“I must thank you, Thornton, for being so nice to my sisters,” she said once.

“I suppose I know how to behave myself in my own house,” he replied coldly, and Clytie retired, and listened, with an ache in her heart, to Mrs. Blather's epithalamion.

Still it comforted her to see Thornton his old bright self again, as she had known him before her marriage, even though she knew his brow would darken on the departure of her guests. It gladdened her to hear him talk animatedly to Janet of the wonders of the forest and the romance of war. The hall, the staircase, and the walls of his smoking room were lined with curiosities of travel: spears and skin-covered shields, swords, wooden maces—a whole armoury of savage weapons. There were feathered headdresses, great rings roughly wrought of virgin gold, strange garments, some stained with blood. On the landing above the hall stairs hung an evil wooden yoke with pendent chains which he had lifted from the necks of two dead slaves, left by the caravan to die and rot by the way; and, flanking it, two great lions' heads glared defiantly. To each relic a history was attached, now commonplace, now ghastly. Clytie knew them all, but she accompanied her sisters as Thornton took them round, a perfect cicerone, and she was pleased to see his face light up and his eyes glow with the reminiscence of dangers and brave deeds. It brought her a glad memory of the past and a little hope for the future. She was grateful, too, to Thornton for thus effectually hiding from her sisters any signs of their recent differences and divergencies. She could receive their congratulations with a sense of grim humour. Anything approaching pity, with whatever delicate sympathy it might be conveyed, would have made her wince with pain. Even Mrs. Farquharson, who had sharp eyes and many kindly affinities with her, shared Mrs. Blather's unquestioning belief in the happiness of her lot. Before others Thornton was still the gallant lover and courteous husband, and Clytie was not unthankful. When questioned as to Thornton's plans for the autumn she answered vaguely. The session had worn him out. He was going up to Scotland for the grouse shooting. She herself was going to take care of the house until his return. She preferred staying in London in August to going anywhere without him. And Mrs. Blather, quite satisfied, paid her a little compliment on her wifeliness, and suggested various household improvements to occupy her time during her grass-widowhood.

So Mrs. Blather and Janet went back to Durdleham, to raise a flutter of excitement at the Durdleham tea tables over their accounts of Clytie's moral and material prosperity and her husband's manifold perfections. But the old man, Mr. Davenant, shook his head and sighed. Slow to receive fresh impressions, he could not conceive Clytie other than wilful and paradoxical. And he was suspicious of the brilliant soldier of fortune. He would much have preferred his daughter to have married a steady-going country gentleman or professional man. Still no fault could be found with Hammerdyke, who had treated him with every courtesy.

Before Thornton's departure for Scotland a kind of reconciliation was patched up between them. The first overtures had come from Clytie. After all, he was her husband. They were bound together, for better or worse, till death parted them. It was only common sense to struggle that it should be for better. She humbled herself, then, a little, confessed that she had been unreasonable in some things. He happened to be in a softer mood, and encouraged her to tell him she was sorry if she had been cold and selfish. Unconsciously she made him feel quite magnanimous. He kissed her gaily, bade her think no more about it, and even condescended to say with regard to the main point at issue:

“Well, perhaps you are about right in not caring to go to Durdleham. Your sisters are not rapid.”

A remark which, although it jarred somewhat on Clytie's strung nerves, she nevertheless accepted as a token of peace.

This was the second time in her life that she had deliberately humbled herself before a man. She thought of it with a queer little pang. When she had put down her young pride so as to retain Kent's friendship and esteem, on the day that Jack had destroyed Winifred's picture, it had been all gladness and triumph. She remembered how happily she had gone to sleep that night, in pleasant subconsciousness of certain feminine workings. It had been a joy to surrender then. But now? She shrugged her shoulders, tried to dismiss it from her mind.

In the middle of August she found herself alone in the great house, enjoying the leisure and solitude, the independence, the freedom from friction. She devoted most of her time to her painting, which had been sadly neglected since her marriage. Her studio was a pleasant room, with a good light. It had not the severe, businesslike air of the one in the King's Road; it was warmer, heavier with velvet hangings, richer in quaint furniture. Instead of the whitewashed walls scrawled over with grotesque caricatures, it had a delicately toned Morris paper. The floor was polished, strewn with thick rugs; a great white bearskin lay before the hearth. The piles of canvases stretched upon rough wooden backs that used to lie stacked up in odd corners Thornton had had framed for her, as a surprise to greet her on her home-coming, and now the best of them were hung round the room. Some of her cherished possessions found a place—the etching by Rupert Kent, two or three of Winifred's delicate studies, and an exquisite Jacquemart that Kent had given her long ago. But otherwise all was new, luxurious, separating her from the old associations of her art life.

Whilst searching for a subject she took out her studies for the Faustina picture. But she put them aside with a shudder. She was painting merely for amusement, to gratify the artistic impulse that urged her to create. But the hope, by which she had been gradually rising towards the goal of her ambition, the hope of fame and full accomplishment, was gone, apparently beyond recall; and she mused upon it sadly. This sense of finality is characteristic of youth—its one governing pessimism. Yet she was cheerful enough, glad to feel the brush between her fingers again, and to smell the familiar odour of turpentine, and to see her fancies take visible form under her touch. The artist within her asserted itself, though vaguely, as from some depth where it lay buried. It was undergoing a subtle change, and its weak, inchoate manifestations were those of a period of transition. But Clytie knew it not.

The Farquharsons returned to town towards the end of the month, and Winifred also, after her annual seaside holiday with the children. And many of Clytie's other friends remained in London, and welcomed her back among them. It was like a return to her old life. Only Kent was absent from her circle. She missed him, sighing a little for the impossible.

Thornton wrote from Scotland with affectionate brevity. He did not know that he could have missed her so much. He had bagged so many brace that morning. He longed to see her. He thought he might as well stay on with Carteret so long as there was any sport forward. His letters, dashed off with a broad quill pen in a great, bold hand, covered four sides of notepaper, and came once a week. Clytie had no reason to complain of lack of attention on the part of her husband. Consequently she looked forward to less troubled days when they should lead their common life together again.

An occasional visitor that she had during these weeks was the boy Jack. He had been for a term at the industrial school to which Treherne and Kent had procured him admittance, and now passed as a reformed character amongst his enthusiasts. The teachers at the school, with vivid memories of stormy scenes, might have demurred at this opinion; but they were miles away holiday-making, and for the time blissfully oblivious of Jack. Four months over a spelling-book and a carpenter's bench, even though the latter may be situated amid pleasant fields, are not long enough to purify the blood from the wildness of London streets; and a lifetime so spent cannot wash out hereditary taint; but they can teach the use of soap and water and a suitable adjustment of garments. And Jack was clean, and his wild elf locks were cropped into compulsory smugness, and his clothes conformed to a strictly conventional order. This external revolution was so startling that an accompanying moral reform seemed unquestionable. Even his mother's dull pessimism was affected by it. When she returned from her work she bribed him with bread and treacle to sit in a chair where she could admire him, instead of sending him out of her way into the streets as she had been wont to do. But Jack ate the bread and treacle and then sauntered into the street of his own accord. He did not admire his mother, and only heeded her blandishments when they assumed an objective form. He admired one person, and that was Winifred. With her the young animal was tame, almost docile. It was merely owing to lack of special instinct that he did not lick her hand. He was often in the studio, where he had been constituted general factotum during his holidays. He swept the floor, cleaned the windows, set the brushes and paints in order before Winifred arrived, ran messages for her, and whenever she permitted would sprawl on the ground by her side, following her movements with his great brown eyes. To prevent him from wasting his time and energies in this passive adoration, Winifred often invented commissions for him which he executed with proud despatch, disregarding all allurements to eat the lotus of the gutter and holding his person sacred as Winifred's messenger. It was in consequence of this that he found his way to Clytie's house, acting as postman for his patroness. At first he was shy. He had not lost the feeling of awe with which Clytie inspired him, nor had he forgotten the dread picture of her anger on that day when she had summarily dismissed him from her service. It was only his devotion to Winifred that had induced him to put, as it seemed to him, his head in the lion's mouth. But when he found that the lion was kind and roared as gently as his own dove, and further, gave him various unimaginable dainties to eat and odd shillings to spend in surreptitious tobacco, the house in the Cromwell Road became invested with pleasant associations.

It was after Clytie had had two or three visits from him that the idea occurred to her to paint the portrait of the reformed Jack. The sittings continued long after the necessity for them had ceased. Jack came of his own accord. At last one day he astonished her by refusing the shilling that she held out to him.

“I didn't come for that,” he said bluntly. “I come to see you.”

Clytie and the urchin in industrial school corduroys looked steadily for some seconds at one another, and both in their respective ways were conscious of having added to their sum of knowledge. Then they became real friends. Clytie looked upon him with a new interest, taking herself severely to task for having summed him up in the past with such scornful superficiality. She atoned for it now by seeking to interest herself in his life, to give herself a little place in it, whereby it should receive some individual colour. This was all the easier now, as Winifred had smoothed down many of Jack's social asperities. Albeit not refined of speech, he no longer used profane language in the studio, nor did he entertain her with sanguinary details of cat murder. When the time came for him to return to school Clytie felt quite sorry.