of
his correspondence. But Subiaco was no longer as inaccessible as
formerly, and there was now a good carriage road all the way and a daily
public conveyance. He should be absent three days, and would spend the
other four with her.

It was a sacrifice on his part, as she guessed from the way in which he
spoke, but it was clearly necessary that Gloria and the child should
have country air during the coming summer. He had often reproached
himself with not having made some such arrangement for the preceding hot
season, but he had seen that she did not suffer from the heat, and his
presence in the capital had been very necessary for his work. Now,
however, it looked possible enough, and before Stefanone went back to
the country for his next trip a preliminary agreement had been made.

Gloria looked forward with impatience to the liberty she was to gain by
his regular absences, for her life was becoming unbearable. She felt
that she could not much longer sustain the perpetual comedy she was
acting, unless she could get an interval of rest from time to time. At
first, the hour he gave her daily when he went out alone had been a
relief and had sufficed. The tears she shed, the letters she wrote to
Reanda, rested her and refreshed her. For she had written others since
that first one, though he had never answered any of them. But the small
daily interruption of her acting was no longer enough. The taste of
liberty had bred an intense craving for more of it, and she dreamed of
being alone for days together.

She wrote to Reanda now without the slightest hope of receiving any
reply, as madmen sometimes write endless letters to women they love,
though they have never exchanged a word with them. It was a vent for her
pent-up suffering. It could make no difference, and Griggs could never
know. Her strange position put the point of faithfulness out of the
question. She was in love with her husband, and the man who loved her
held her to her play of love by the terror she felt of what lay behind
his gentleness. She dreamed once that he had found out the truth, and
was tearing her head from her body with those hands of his, slowly,
almost gently, with mysterious eyes and still face. She woke, and found
that the heavy tress of her hair was twisted round her throat and was
choking her; but the impression remained, and her dread of Griggs
increased, and it became harder and harder to act her part.

At the same time the attraction of s