walked off quickly, with his head down, so as
to lose himself in the crowd and not be seen by Mary or her companions.

She was pale as a drowned girl when Carleton and Hannaford helped her
out of the oilskin which had protected her new fur cloak; and never,
perhaps, had she been so beautiful. There was something unearthly about
her, as if she had seen a vision and the blinding light of it still
shone white upon her face. As he touched her, Hannaford felt a thrill as
of new life go through him. By his own wild recklessness he had spoilt
his career and put himself, so he believed, beyond the pale of any
woman's love. He had thought that he had trained himself not to care;
but in that instant, while Mary, dazed by her vision, almost hung in his
arms and Carleton's, he knew that he was as other men. He wondered why
last night she had meant no more to him than a pretty new face at Monte
Carlo, a rather amusing problem which would soon lose its abstruse
charm. It was like tearing out a live nerve to feel that she could think
of him only with disgust or maybe horror. Yet he knew that, now he had
seen her face with the wonderful light on it, he would have to try and
win something from her, if only pity. The idea came to him that she and
he, and these men with them, and Madeleine d'Ambre, and others who would
gather round the beautiful and lucky player, were figures being woven
into a web of tapestry together; that they were forced to group
themselves as the weaver of the web decreed. He saw his own figure woven
into an obscure and shadowy corner far from that of Mary, and, rebelling
against the choice of the weaver, wished to tear the tapestry in pieces.
But the next moment he was ready to smile at himself with the quiet,
cynical smile which had become familiar to all those who knew him.
"Nothing is tragic unless you think so," he said to himself. Yet he
could not put out of his mind the fancy of the web with figure after
figure being woven into it, against the background of sea and mountain.
It was not unlike the idea which had come to Peter in a half-waking
dream the night after Mary went away. And at the convent in the north of
Scotland the same thought still came back to Peter, though no news had
yet been received there from Monte Carlo.

"Were you afraid?" the Maharajah of Indorwana asked Mary, as the colour
slowly flowed back to her face.

"No," she said, dreamily, "not afraid. But it was like dying and going
to anothe