bsolute and supreme. It was that this strange dissimilarity, if he
could have analyzed it, would have struck him as amounting to a
difference of soul. Or rather, it was as if Violet's face had never
given up her soul's secret until now; never until now had it so much as
hinted that Violet had any soul at all. The comparative fineness and
sharpness of outline might have reminded him of his wife as she had
looked when she came out of her torture after the birth of her first
child, but that no implacable resentment and no revolt was there. It was
plainly to be seen (nor did Ransome altogether miss it) that here were a
body and a soul that had suffered to extremity, and were now utterly
beaten, utterly submissive.

This suggestion of frightful things endured was more lamentable by
contrast with the shining sleekness, the drenched splendor of her
attire. Ransome saw that her clothes helped to build up the impression
of her strangeness. Violet was dressed as his wife, at the most frenzied
height of her extravagance, had never dressed, as even Mercier's wife
could not have dressed, nor yet his mistress. The black satin coat and
gown that clung to her body like a sheath showed flawless, though they
streamed with rain; the lace at her throat, the black velvet hat with
the raking plume that had once been yellow, the design and quality of
the flat bag slung on her arm were details that belonged (and Ransome
knew it) to a world that was not his nor Mercier's either. And as he
took them in he conceived from them an abominable suspicion.

His eyes must have conveyed his repulsion, for she spoke as if answering
them.

"You mustn't mind my clothes. They're done for."

She looked down, self-pitying, at her poor slippered feet standing in a
pool of rain.

"I'm making such a mess of your nice hall."

A little laugh shook in her throat and turned into a fit of coughing. He
saw how instantly one hand went to her mouth and pressed there while the
other struggled blindly, frantically, with the opening of her bag.

"What is it?"

"My hanky--" She coughed the words out. It, the childish word, moved him
to a momentary compassion.

"Here you are."

She stepped back from him as she stretched out her arm; then she turned
and leaned against the wall, hiding her face and muffling her cough in
Ransome's pocket handkerchief.

Each gesture, each surreptitious and yet frantic effort at suppression,
showed her a creature that some brute had