e--to have brought it there! She, who had once been
"Selene" to him.

Loring stood gazing after her as she walked from him into the hall. Her
beauty struck him as startling. But it struck him as the beauty of the
Snow Queen struck Rudi. It left a sliver of ice in his heart. He was
rather scared by something in her whole look and air. He wondered if
Linda had noticed it. He'd have to talk things out with Linda
to-morrow--take her for a long walk--off on the rocks somewhere. Things
must be got into shape somehow. He had a spasm of sheer terror when he
thought that Sophy might suspect something. Yet he couldn't give up
Belinda. Yet he did not want to give up Sophy. Here again was the
impenetrable wall and the irresistible ball. He had not yet realised
that he alone was not the arbiter of their three destinies. He thought
that it still remained with him to say what the future should or should
not be for himself, for Belinda, for Sophy.

A dance followed the dinner to which they went that night. And Sophy
danced for the first time in several weeks.

As soon as Amaldi saw her, with that tense, bright fever of beauty upon
her, he knew that she was at some crisis. Something of this look she had
had that night in London when he first met her. What was it? What had
brought this strange, "fatal" look to her? Love and apprehension strung
him to the utmost pitch. For he had seen agony under her bright cloak of
exaltation. He feared now that he must have been mistaken. That her love
for Loring still survived.... That this crisis at which she was came
probably from the sudden discovery of how matters stood between her
husband and Belinda Horton.

* * * * *

To Sophy that night was horrible. She did not even try to sleep. She
rushed to and fro among throngs of turbulent thoughts, like a lost child
in a Carnival--like one seeking a friend among frenzied revellers. Now
she would think that she had found it--the thought that would befriend
her. Then the mask would slip, and she would see the evil leer of
revenge, or hatred, or personal malice, or self-centred wrath--not once
the kind face of a thought worthy of her. But towards morning it came to
her of its own will. She lay afterwards with closed eyes, spent and
lifeless. That mental travail had been terrible. Now her good thought
lay weakly on her heart like a babe outworn also by the fierce struggle
of birth. It seemed scarcely to live. She had conce