men who could
not be persuaded. She had vowed that Austria should be saved at any
cost.

No, she could not go now. She must remain for another month--two
months, possibly. She was no longer in that undisciplined stage of
youth when flight from danger seems the only solution. To wreck the
lives of others in order to secure her own peace of mind would make her
both ridiculous and contemptible in her own eyes, and she had yet to
despise herself. She would "stick it out," "see it through," to quote
the vernacular of these curious American novels she had been reading;
trusting that she had merely been suffering from a flurry of the
senses . . . not so remarkable perhaps. . . .

But her mind drifted back to the past month. Senses? And if it were
not that alone, but merely the inevitable accompaniment of far stranger
processes . . . if it were what she had once so long sought and with
such disastrous results . . . She had believed for so many years that
it existed somewhere, in some man . . . that it was every woman's
right . . . even if it could not last for ever. . . . But while it
lasted! After all, imagination had its uses. It helped to prolong as
well as create. . . . She sank back and closed her eyes, succumbing to
an ineffable languor.

It lasted but a moment. She started up with an exclamation of
impatience and disgust; and she shivered from head to foot. The room
was bitterly cold. There were only ashes on the hearth.

XIII

Clavering turned hot and cold several times during his walk home. He
had been atrociously rude, impertinent. If she hadn't ordered him out
of the house it must have been because she was a creature of moods, and
he had merely amused her for the hour. No doubt she would wake up in a
proper state of indignation and give her servants orders. . . .
Or--was she sincere when she demanded his friendship, willing to put up
with his abominable manners, trusting to her own wit to defeat him,
lull his suspicions? Friendship! The best thing for him to do was to
avoid her like the plague. He hated to admit it, but he was afraid of
her, not so much of falling in love with her and going through tragedy,
which was probably what it would come to, as of the terrible force so
skillfully hidden in that white and delicate body, of a powerful
personality fortified by an unimaginable past. She gave the impression
of a woman who had been at grips with life and conquered it, from first
t