He had lunched freely before coming to Blanca's Christmas function, but by four o'clock, the gases which had made him feel the world a pleasant place had nearly all evaporated, and he was suffering from a wish to drink again.

Or it may have been that this girl, with her soft look, gave him the feeling that she ought to have belonged to him; and as she did not, he felt, perhaps, a natural irritation that she belonged, or might belong, to somebody else.

Or, again, it was possibly his natural male distaste for the works of women painters which induced an awkward frame of mind.
Two days later in a daily paper over no signature, appeared this little paragraph: "We learn that 'The Shadow,' painted by Bianca Stone, who is not generally known to be the wife of the writer, Mr.Hilary Dallison, will soon be exhibited at the Bencox Gallery.

This very 'fin-de-siecle' creation, with its unpleasant subject, representing a woman (presumably of the streets) standing beneath a gas-lamp, is a somewhat anaemic piece of painting.

If Mr.Dallison, who finds the type an interesting one, embodies her in one of his very charming poems, we trust the result will be less bloodless." The little piece of green-white paper containing this information was handed to Hilary by his wife at breakfast.