of half-lights into which she
had stepped, under the cooling stars, and then to return and take up
one's old place in the masque.

But her fantasy passed. In the distance two glowing orbs of a hansom
came slowly towards her, and her purpose grew suddenly very strong.

The man reined in his horse with an inquiring glance at the hooded
figure on the pavement, seeking a fare. And it was without
hesitation that she engaged him, giving him the number of Oswyn's
house in Frith Street, Soho, in her calm, well-bred voice, and
bidding him be quick.

But the horse was incapable--tired, perhaps (she recalled the fact
long afterwards, and the very shape and colour of the bony,
ill-groomed animal, as one remembers trivial details upon occasions
of great import); and after a while she resigned herself to a
tedious drive.

As they rattled along confusedly through the crowded streets she
caught from time to time the reflection of her own face in the two
little mirrors at each side, and wondered to find herself the same.
For she did not deceive herself, nor undervalue the crushing force
of the blow which she had received.

To her husband, when she turned scornfully from his clumsy
evasions--for a moment, perhaps, to herself--she had justified the
singular course she was taking by an overwhelming necessity of
immediately facing the truth, in which, perhaps, there still lurked
the dim possibility of explanation whereby her husband's vileness
might find the shadow of an excuse.

But with further reflection--and she was reflecting with passionate
intensity--this little glow-worm of hope expired. The truth! She
knew it already--had known before, almost instinctively--that Philip
Rainham's justification could only be the warrant of her husband's
guilt; no corroboration of Oswyn's could make that dreary fact any
plainer than it was already.

No, it was hardly the truth which she desired so much as an act of
tardy expiation which she would make. For with the bitterness of her
conviction that, for all her wealth, and her beauty, and her youth,
she had, none the less, irretrievably thrown away her life, there
mingled an immense contrition at having been so blind and hard, so
culpably unjust to the most generous of men, who had deliberately
effaced himself for her good.

And the exceeding bitterness of her self-reproach, which alone saved
her composure, forbidding the mockery of tears, was only exaggerated
when she remembered how vain