nd guard you, to have to deal you this
blow!... Forgive me, Vanna--my dearest, dearest love..."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Vanna laid the letter on the table once more, and raised a grey face,
from which the lingering youth had been stricken at a blow. Her eyes
stared through her window. The dull vista of chimney-tops stretched
away into an illimitable distance. Dun banks of smoke hung pall-like
over the city. The rain was falling.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

How does one live through the first days of an intolerable grief?
Looking forward, looking back, it appears impossible that reason itself
could remain, yet in reality the automaton with the broken heart eats
and sleeps, clothes itself, speaks in an ordinary voice, performs its
necessary work.

Throughout the hours of that tortured morning Vanna told herself
repeatedly that she would go mad, she would certainly go mad. It was
impossible that any human creature could endure such anguish. She, in
whose blood ran the fatal taint, must surely succumb sooner than others.
She would go mad, and Piers would be justified. All the world would
pity him. All the world would hail his escape.

But she did not go mad. She was not even ill. During the whole time of
that awful soul-sickness there was not one hour when she was physically
incapacitated. This extraordinary immunity of the flesh, over which
each mourner marvels afresh, seemed at the time a fresh grievance. To
be too ill to think, too ill to care, would have been heaven as compared
with this hell of bitter, rambling thoughts. Her hero had fallen; his
protestations had been empty words; there was no faith, or truth in this
world, or the next; no mercy, no justice! She shut her doors and would
admit no one. Jean and Robert would grieve for, and with her. Jean
would cry. Robert's face would cloud over with that pained, shrinking
expression which it wore when any one dear to him was in grief, _but
they would not be surprised_! In conclave one with another they would
absolve Piers's conduct, and say it was "natural." Vanna laughed--a
harsh, bitter laugh at the thought. So easy, so easy, when one had all
the world could give, to be calm and judicial for others less fortunate!
She hated Jean. She hated Robert. She hated the whole world. She
hated God Himself.

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