n another plane. She had the mental poise
of a Sylphide, surveying from the cool balcony of a cloud the doings of
two Salamanders in their grotto of flames. This feeling also passed
quickly. She found herself realising that she was Sophy Loring--just
simply and painfully a woman who had seen her husband holding another
woman in his arms.

As she faced this realisation, all of pride in her rose to announce, "I
do not care." But no sooner had one part of her said this, than another
part cried out that she did care--intensely, vehemently. She struggled
to clear her mood. She asked herself harshly whether she had any love
left for Morris. The reply came with mortifying promptness. Whether she
loved him or not, she passionately resented another woman's loving him
and being loved by him. She felt humiliated by the crass, primitive
fibres that this wound had exposed in the substance of her nature. Was
she then capable of a blind, instinctive, mean jealousy, when there was
no real love left to excuse it? She did not know that the jealousy for
what has been is sometimes even more bitter if less keen than that for
what actually exists. She was jealous for all the beautiful, unsullied
past that this present act of his defaced beyond retrieval. But then
there was also the angry fire of wounded pride--of hurt womanly vanity
in her flame of resentment against Belinda. She knew this. It humiliated
her to the core. Then her feeling veered again. She experienced a throe
of such scorn for Loring as sickened her. This in turn reacted into a
sort of wild, impersonal regret for the whole thing--for all concerned
in it--Morris, the girl, herself. It was Othello's cry of unspeakable,
confused anguish that echoed in her heart: "But yet the pity of it,
Iago! O Iago--the pity of it, Iago!"...

She rose suddenly with a quick, determined movement and looked at her
watch. Seven o'clock. She and Loring were dining out at half-past eight.
She must have time to think, to reflect. There must not be a sign of
what she knew in face or voice or manner, until she had thoroughly
determined how to act. She must go to this dinner as if nothing had
happened. She must meet Belinda as she had parted from her. She was
deeply thankful that she and the girl were not in the habit of
exchanging kisses. Sophy had strength of will, but not enough to have
allowed her to kiss Belinda or receive her kiss that evening. And as she
thought of the girl's brilliant, sensual m