d shame. The big trees overhead were
all black now and very gaunt and grim, and the breeze was moaning in
their branches.

"I had disgrace enough already," she thought; "I might have spared myself
a degradation like this!"

Drake had supposed that she came to plead for herself to-night as she had
pleaded for Polly a week ago. How natural that he should think so! How
natural and yet how hideous!

"I hate him! I hate him!" she thought.

John Storm had been right. In their heart of hearts these men of society
had only one idea about a girl, and she had stumbled on it unawares. They
never thought of her as a friend and an equal, but only as a dependent
and a plaything, to be taken or left as they liked.

"Oh, how shameful to be a woman--how shameful, how shameful!"

And Drake had renounced her! In the hideous tangle of his error he had
renounced her! For honour's sake, and her own sake, and for sake of his
character as a gentleman--renounced her! Oh, there was somebody who would
never have renounced her whatever had happened, and yet she had driven
him away, and he was gone forever!

"I hate myself! I hate myself!"

She remembered how often out of recklessness and daring and high spirits,
but without a thought of evil, she had broken through the barrier of
manners and given Drake occasion to think lightly of her--at the ball, at
the theatre, at tea in his chambers, and by dressing herself up as a man.

"I hate myself! I hate myself!"

John Storm was right, and Drake in his different way was right too, and
she alone had been to blame. But Fate was laughing at her, and the jest
was very, very cruel.

"No matter. It is all for the best," she thought. She would be the
stronger for this experience--the stronger and the purer too, to stand
alone and to face the future.

She got back to the hospital just as the great clock of Westminster was
chiming the half-hour, and she stood a moment on the steps to listen to
it. Only half an hour had passed, and yet all the world had changed!

XXI.

It was the last day of Glory's probation, and, dressed in the long blue
ulster in which she came from the Isle of Man, she was standing in the
matron's room waiting for her wages and discharge. The matron was sitting
sideways at her table, with her dog snarling in her lap. She pointed to a
tiny heap of gold and silver and to a foolscap paper which lay beside it.

"That is your month's salary, nurse, and this is your 'charact