"Yes."
"Ah, that accounts for it. He could give his mind to it in that case." Wyndham was surprised at his own fatuity; his remarks sounded like the weird inanities that pass for witticisms in dreams.
"Perhaps. But never mind Mr. Haviland; I want you to introduce me to your wife."
Wyndham looked round; his wife had turned an unconscious back.
"Oh—er—thank you, you're very kind, but—er—we're just going."
He had not meant them so, but his words were like a whip laid across Audrey's shoulders. He moved on, and his wife joined him.
Audrey came across them half an hour later, stooping over some designs in black and white. She saw Mrs. Langley Wyndham look up in her husband's face with a smile, raising her golden eyebrows. The look was one of those intimate trifles that have no meaning beyond the two persons concerned in it. For Audrey, smarting from Wyndham's insult, it was the flick of the lash in her face.
CHAPTER XXI
In the autumn of that year Audrey woke and found herself the classic of the hour, a literary queen without a rival. Wyndham's great work was finished, and it stood alone. Not another heroine of fiction could lift her head beside Laura, the leading character of "An Idyll of Piccadilly." He himself owned, almost with emotion, that it was the best thing he had ever done. He had not touched the surface this time; he had gone deep down to the springs of human nature. He had not merely analysed the woman till her character lay in ruins around him, but he had built her up again out of the psychic atoms, and Laura was alive. She showed the hand of the master by her own nullity. In her splendid vanity she was like some piece of elaborate golden fretwork, from which the substance had been refined by excess of workmanship.