her remorse must remain. It mattered no
jot that she was sorry, since death had sealed their estrangement
ironically for all time.

In her passionate recognition of his constant justice and kindness,
which of old, vainly striving to perpetuate the fading illusion of
her husband's honour (her generosity did not pause to remember how
vain these efforts had been), she had discounted for hypocrisy, she
felt that no price of personal suffering would have been too heavy
if only for one hour, one moment, she could have recalled him from
the world of shadows to her side.

She could figure to herself, refining on her misery, his attitude in
such a case: the half sad, half jesting reassurance of his gravely
pardoning eyes.

They haunted her just then, those eyes of Philip Rainham, which had
been to the last so ambiguous and so sad, and were now perpetually
closed.

And for the first time a suspicion flashed across her mind, which,
while it made her heart flutter like a frightened bird, seemed to
her the one drop hitherto lacking in the cup of her unhappiness.
Had, then, after all, that gentle indifference of her friend masked
an immense hunger, a deeply-felt need of personal tenderness, which
she might have supplied--ah, how gladly!--if she had known? Could he
have cared more deeply than people knew?

She reminded herself the next moment, as they came to a sudden
standstill before a dark-green door, how idle all such questions
were--vain beating of the hands against the shut door of death!

She alighted and dismissed her cab, and in the interval which
elapsed before her ring was answered by a slovenly little servant,
who gaped visibly at the lady's hurried request that her name should
be taken up to Mr. Oswyn, she had leisure for the first time to
realize the strangeness of her course.

Her mother, Charles, her guests--Felicia Dollond and the rest--how
would they consider the adventure if ever they should know? It was
easy to imagine their attitude of shocked disapproval, and her
brother's disgusted repudiation of the whole business as a thing,
most emphatically, which one did not do. Ah, no! it was not a
departure such as this that a well-bred society Spartan could even
decently contemplate! And it was almost with a laugh, devoid,
indeed, of merriment, that Eve tossed consideration of these
scruples contemptuously away.

At last she was in revolt against their world and the pedantry of
its little inflexible laws; and