s sound though so elastic, understood perfectly.

"Very well," she said again. "But mind you send for me the first moment
you feel you need me."

"Thanks," murmured Sophy. "Thanks--dear Olive."

Amaldi did not try to talk to her. She was very grateful to him for
this. He understood too well. These others pitied but did not
understand. To have felt the close contact of a compassion that
comprehended was more than she could have endured. It would have broken
her down utterly. But he watched her from afar with a quiet yet absorbed
look, that was not without meaning to Suberov, on whom, also, Sophy had
made a deep and poignant impression.

He came near the young man, and said in Italian in his sweet, melancholy
voice, after himself regarding Sophy in silence for a moment:

"A strong soul--heroic!"

Amaldi answered dreamily, as though it were quite natural for the old
statesman to address him in his native tongue.

"Yes, Excellency, but souls like that are made for sorrow."

"And sorrow for such souls," said Suberov, with his mournful, delicate
smile.

XII

Sophy found herself in the grey, rainy dawn, still walking to and fro in
her bedroom. She had always thought that it was only in books and plays
that people wrung their hands, but now she was twisting her fingers so
hard together that the rings bit cruelly. She stripped them off--then
stood gazing curiously at the finger where her wedding ring had been.
She felt that there should be a little, blistered band where the
poisoned ring had rested.

Yes--it was all over. There could be no compromise--no atonement this
time. It was over--over. She would take her son and go back to her own
country, to her own people. Nothing, no one could move her. And she
heard again in imagination that brutal voice, shouting: "You lie!"

She went to a little cupboard and poured out a dose of _sal volatile_.
This she drank, then leaned back for a few moments on the couch at the
foot of her bed.

A knock at the door roused her. She sat up, gazing about her, at a loss
for a few seconds. Then she realised. She must have slept.

"Who is it?" she asked.

"It's me, m'm. Tilda," came the voice of her little maid.

"Wait a moment, Tilda."

She sprang to the glass, smoothed her hair--flung a dressing-gown about
her shoulders.

Tilda stared when she saw that white face, with the great dusky circles
round the eyes.

"O dear, m'm, how you do look!" she faltered. "Are you ill