lly. But in reply the girl only laughed her
careless, whinnying laugh again.

Sophy had just time to spring back behind the dark columns of the porch
before they could recognise her. She had been as if paralysed just at
first. She squeezed in among the columns, with a feeling of sick
faintness. Now they were at the church door ... they paused.

"Now here's where I balk!" rang out Belinda's voice. "No more rotten old
churches in mine to-day, thank you. Come along, Morry."

"But, Belinda-- I really need to rest a moment!" protested Mrs. Horton.

"You can rest all the time you're eating your luncheon," replied her
step-daughter. "Come along, Morry!"

Sophy thanked Heaven that she was not called upon to hear Morris's
voice. He was evidently sulky about something. He made no reply. Mrs.
Horton grumbled a little, calling Belinda "selfish." Again Belinda
laughed. Then the three went on up the narrow, twisting Rio.

Sophy, trembling all through, leaned there against the columns, with
eyes closed. Round and round in her mind the old adage went humming:
"_It never rains but it pours.... It never rains but it pours_...."

She remembered that Loring and Belinda had been married last May. She
felt ashamed and sick for herself, for them, for life, for human nature,
for the whole social scheme, for civilisation.... Everything seemed to
her like a sickness in that moment. This life that the world crawled
with was like the swarming of maggots in a cheese.... She hated
herself--she hated the existing order of things. She understood the
darkest throes of pessimists and cynics in that moment. And under it all
her heart burnt fiercely with the supreme pang of the proud, chaste
being, who has yielded to lesser loves before the one, great, real love
has been revealed.

* * * * *

Sophy went back into the church and stayed there a long time. She felt
faint and ill. She was grateful for the quiet darkness in which she
could sit still without attracting attention. At last she went out into
the street again. When she reached the Piazza, she took a gondola and
returned to the Rio San Vio. She had forgotten that she had not lunched.
She looked so pale and strange that Rosa exclaimed when she saw her. She
lay down on a sofa in the little sitting-room and let the kind soul
bring her a cup of hot tea. This revived her a little, and by and by as
she lay there she fell asleep. It was nearly six o'clock when she wa