her watch. Craven lived not far off. He
might be at home by now. But perhaps she had better give him, and
herself, a little more time. For she was still undecided, did not yet
know what she was going to do. Impulse drove her on, but something
else, reason perhaps, or fear, or secret, deep down, painfully acquired
knowledge, was trying to hold her back. She remembered her last stay
in Paris, her hesitation then, her dinner with Caroline Briggs, the
definite decision she had come to, her effort to carry it out, the
terrible breakdown of her decision at the railway station and its
horrible result.

Disaster had come upon her because she had yielded to an impulse ten
years ago. Surely that should teach her not to yield to an impulse
now. But the one was so different from the other, as different as that
horrible man in Paris had been from young Craven. That horrible man in
Paris! He had disappeared out of her life. She had never seen him again,
had never mentioned him to anybody. He had gone, as mysteriously as he
had come, carrying his booty with him, all those lovely things which
had been hers, which she had worn on her neck and arms and bosom, in her
hair and on her hands. Sometimes she had wondered about him, about
the mentality and the life of such a man as he was, a creature of the
underworld, preying on women, getting up in the morning, going to bed
at night, with thoughts of crime in his mind, using his gift of beauty
loathsomely. She had wondered, too, how it was that such loathsomeness
as his was able to hide itself, how it was that he could look so manly,
so athletic, even so wistful and eager for sympathy.

But Seymour Portman had seen through him at a first glance. Evidently
that type of man had a power to trick women's instincts, but was less
successful with men. Perhaps Caroline was right, and the whole question
was simply one of the lust of the eye.

Young Craven was good-looking too. But surely she had not been attracted
to him, brought into sympathy with him merely because of that. She hoped
not. She tried hard to think not. A woman of her age must surely be
beyond the lure of mere looks in a man unconnected with the deeper
things which make up personality.

And yet ten years ago she had been lured towards a loathsome and utterly
abominable personality by mere looks. Certainly her nature inclined her
to be a prey to just that--the lust of the eye.

(Caroline Briggs was horribly apposite in some of her