in
his heart: "When I leave this house I will deliver myself up. I will go
to the nearest police court and say 'Take me, I have done my duty in the
eye of God, but committed a crime in the eye of my country.'" And when
the voice replied, "That will only lead to your own death also," he
thought, "Death is a gain to those who die for their cause, and my death
will be a protest against the degradation of women, a witness against the
men who make them the creatures of their pleasure, their playthings,
their victims, and their slaves." Thinking so, he found a strange thrill
in the idea that all the world would hear of what he had done. "But I
will say a mass for her soul in the morning," he told himself, and a
chill came over him and his heart grew cold as a stone.

Then he lifted his head and listened. The room was quiet, there was not a
sound in the gardens of the Inn, and, through a window which was partly
open, he could hear the monotonous murmur of the streets outside. A great
silence seemed to have fallen on London--a silence more awful than all
the noise and confused clamour of the evening. "It must be late," he
thought; "it must be the middle of the night." Then the thought came to
him that perhaps, Glory would not come home that night at all, and in a
sudden outburst of pent-up feeling his heart cried, "Thank God! Thank
God!"

He had said it aloud and the sound of his voice in the silent
room--awakened all his faculties. Suddenly he was aware of other sounds
outside. There was a rumble of wheels and the rattle of a hansom. The
hansom came nearer and nearer. It stopped in the outside courtyard. There
was the noise of a curb-chain as if the horse were shaking its head. The
doors of the hansom opened with a creak and banged back on their spring.
A voice, a woman's voice, said "Good-night!" and another voice, a man's
voice, answered, "Good-night and thank you, miss!" Then the cab wheels
turned and went off. All his senses seemed to have gone into his ears,
and in the silence of that quiet place he heard everything. He rose to
his feet and stood waiting.

After a moment there was the sound of a key in the lock of the door
below; the rustle of a woman's dress coming up the stairs, an odour of
perfume in the air, an atmosphere of freshness and health, and then the
door of the room which had been ajar was swung open and there on the
threshold with her languid and tired but graceful movements was she
herself, Glory. Then