He shook off the heroic mood as he had doffed his
Bosnian cloak. In a few minutes, though the heightened color remained,
he was chatting and laughing as though nothing had happened.

* * * * *

She, exhausted physically and morally by her conflict with him, hardly
spoke on the way home. He entertained her, watching her all the time--a
hundred speculations about her passing through his brain. He understood
perfectly how the insight which she had allowed him into her grief and
her remorse had broken down the barriers between them. Her incapacity
for silence, and reticence, had undone her. Was he a villain to have
taken advantage of it?

Why? With a strange, half-cynical clearness he saw her, as the obstacle
that she was, in Ashe's life and career. For Ashe--supposing he, Cliffe,
persuaded her--there would be no doubt a first shock of wrath and
pain--then a sense of deliverance. For her, too, deliverance! It excited
his artist's sense to think of all the further developments through
which he might carry that eager, plastic nature. There would be a new
Kitty, with new capacities and powers. Wasn't that justification enough?
He felt himself a sculptor in the very substance of life, moulding a
living creature afresh, disengaging it from harsh and hindering
conditions. What was there vile in that?

The argument pursued itself.

"The modern judges for himself--makes his own laws, as a god, knowing
good and evil. No doubt in time a new social law will emerge--with new
sanctions. Meanwhile, here we are, in a moment of transition,
manufacturing new types, exploring new combinations--by which let those
who come after profit!"

Little delicate, distinguished thing!--every aspect of her, angry or
sweet, sad or wilful, delighted his taste and sense. Moreover, she was
<i>his</i> deliverance, too--from an ugly and vulgar entanglement of which he
was ashamed. He shrank impatiently from memories which every now and
then pursued him of the Ricci's coarse beauty and exacting ways. Kitty
had just appeared in time! He felt himself rehabilitated in his own
eyes. Love may trifle as it pleases with what people call "law"; but
there are certain aesthetic limits not to be transgressed.

The Ricci, of course, was wild and thirsting for revenge. Let her!
Anxieties far more pressing disturbed him. What if he tempted Kitty to
this escapade--and the rough life killed her? He saw clearly how frail
she was.

But i