ter coming. Bianca had no need of
being told that Hilary was outside. She went into the passage and opened
the front door.

He was coming up the steps, his face worn like that of a man in fever,
and at the sight of his wife he stood quite still, looking into her face.

Without the quiver of an eyelid, without the faintest trace of emotion,
or the slightest sign that she knew him to be there, Bianca passed and
slowly walked away.

CHAPTER XL

FINISH OF THE COMEDY

Those who may have seen Hilary driving towards the little model's
lodgings saw one who, by a fixed red spot on either cheek, and the
over-compression of his quivering lips, betrayed the presence of that
animality which underlies even the most cultivated men.

After eighteen hours of the purgatory of indecision, he had not so much
decided to pay that promised visit on which hung the future of two lives,
as allowed himself to be borne towards the girl.

There was no one in the passage to see him after he had passed Bianca in
the doorway, but it was with a face darkened by the peculiar stabbing
look of wounded egoism that he entered the little model's room.

The sight of it coming so closely on the struggle she had just been
through was too much for the girl's self-control.

Instead of going up to him, she sat down on the corded trunk and began to
sob. It was the sobbing of a child whose school-treat has been
cancelled, of a girl whose ball-dress has not come home in time. It only
irritated Hilary, whose nerves had already borne all they could bear. He
stood literally trembling, as though each one of these common little sobs
were a blow falling on the drum-skin of his spirit; and through every
fibre he took in the features of the dusty, scent-besprinkled room--the
brown tin trunk, the dismantled bed, the rust-red doors.

And he realised that she had burned her boats to make it impossible for a
man of sensibility to disappoint her!

The little model raised her face and looked at him. What she saw must
have been less reassuring even than the first sight had been, for it
stopped her sobbing. She rose and turned to the window, evidently trying
with handkerchief and powder-puff to repair the ravages caused by her
tears; and when she had finished she still stood there with her back to
him. Her deep breathing made her young form quiver from her waist up to
the little peacock's feather in her hat; and with each supple movement it
seemed offering