or one instant the wild, cynical desire came over him to turn and
clasp her in his arms, to press those lips which never but once he had
kissed, and that was when she had plighted her secret troth to him, and
had broken it for three million pounds. Why not? She was a woman, she
was beautiful, she was a siren who had lured him and used him and
tossed him by. Why not? All her art was now used, the art of the born
coquette which had been exquisitely cultivated since she was a child,
to bring him back to her feet--to the feet of the wife of Rudyard Byng.
Why not? For an instant he had the dark impulse to treat her as she
deserved, and take a kiss "as long as my exile, as sweet as my
revenge"; but then the bitter memory came that this was the woman to
whom he had given the best of which he was capable and the promise of
that other best which time and love and life truly lived might
accomplish; and the wild thing died in him.

The fever fled, and his senses became as cold as the statue of
Andromeda on the pedestal at his hand. He looked at her. He did not for
the moment realize that she was in reality only a girl, a child in so
much; wilful, capricious, unregulated in some ways, with the hereditary
taint of a distorted moral sense, and yet able, intuitive and wise, in
so many aspects of life and conversation. Looking, he determined that
she should never have that absolution which any outward or inward
renewal of devotion would give her. Scorn was too deep--that arrogant,
cruel, adventitious attribute of the sinner who has not committed the
same sin as the person he despises--

"Sweet is the refuge of scorn."

His scorn was too sweet; and for the relish of it on his tongue, the
price must be paid one way or another. The sin of broken faith she had
sinned had been the fruit of a great temptation, meaning more to a
woman, a hundred times, than to a man. For a man there is always
present the chance of winning a vast fortune and the power that it
brings; but it can seldom come to a woman except through marriage. It
ill became him to be self-righteous, for his life had not been
impeccable--

"The shaft of slander shot
Missed only the right blot!"

Something of this came to him suddenly now as she drew away from him
with a sense of humiliation, and a tear came unbidden to her eye.

She wiped the tear away, hastily, as there came a slight tapping at the
door, and Krool entered, his glance enveloping them both in one
l