paint no more such pictures for
love or for money, if their life were not to end in disaster. Did he
know what he had done with this Russian woman?... Where were they,
anyway?

She looked up at the silent _manoir_. The green blinds were drawn to
shut out the western sun. Milly knew the long, high room with its
timbered ceiling which Madame Saratoff had restored and furnished in
English style, and where, for the most part, she lived. The two were
there together now--she was sure of it. A new and fiercer emotion swept
Milly towards the house: she would discover them in their shame, in
their cruel selfishness. But she stopped on the stairs, suffocated by
her passion. She felt their presence just above her with a physical
sense of pain, but she lacked the strength to go forward. A terrible
sense of weakness in face of her defeat made her tremble. Her heart was
broken, she said; what mattered it now what they did. She had no doubts:
all was revealed as if she saw them in each other's arms. No man could
have discovered the secret of a woman's inmost being, if she had not
voluntarily yielded to him the key....

After a time she left the place, slipped out through the garden-gate
into the green field behind the _manoir_ and wandered unseeingly along
the hedge, and at length flung herself down on the ground, sobbing. She
was alone, so utterly alone. The one in whose hands she had put her
whole life had betrayed her and deserted her. It was worse than death.
They were there in that dim, silent room, in the utmost intimacy, and
she lay here outside, robbed and abandoned.... She rose to get farther
away from the place, when she heard steps approaching on the other side
of the hedge. Kneeling close to the ground, she could see through the
thick roots of the hedge and watch the two as they came up the lane. It
was her husband and the Russian woman. They were not closeted in the
house. She had been wrong. They had been for a stroll after his work,
and were coming back now for their tea, silently and companionably, side
by side. For the merest moment Milly had a sense of relief: it might not
be true what her heart had said, after all. But almost at once she knew
that it made no difference just what their relations were or had been.

She could read their faces as they came slowly towards her,--the Russian
woman's slanting glance from covered eyes of hateful content as she
looked at the artist. The "one who eats what she wants!"... The