of the window at the rugged line of the hills.

Between her and the pale sky she saw her own life, and the hideous
failure of it all, culminating in the certainty that she was of the
blood of the old peasant couple to whose house a seeming chance had
brought her to die. She felt that she could not live, and would not live
if she could. It was all too wildly horrible, too utterly desolate.

The only human being that clung to her was the one of all others whom
she most feared and hated, whose very touch sent a cold shiver through
her. She and fate together had pounded her heart in a mortar, as the old
woman had said. With a bitterness that sickened her she thought of her
brief married life, of her poor social ambition, of her hopeless efforts
to be some one amongst the great. What could she be, the daughter of
peasants, what could she have ever been? Probably some one knew the
truth about her, in all that great society. Such things might be known.
Francesca Campodonico's delicate noble face rose faintly between her and
the sky, and she realized with excruciating suddenness the distance that
separated her from the woman she hated, the woman who perhaps knew that
Gloria Dalrymple was the daughter of a peasant and a fit wife by her
birth for Angelo Reanda, the steward's son.

The ruin of her life spread behind her and before her. She could not
face it. The confusion of it all seemed to blind her, and the confusion
was pierced by the terrible thought that on the next day but one Griggs
would return again, the one being who would not leave her, who believed
in her, who worshipped her, and whom she hated for himself and for the
destruction of her existence which had come by him.

In the box before her was death, painful perhaps, but sure as the grave
itself. She was not a coward, except when she was afraid of Paul Griggs,
and the fear lest he, too, should find out the truth was worse than the
fear of mortal pain.

She sat still in her place, staring out of the window. After a long
time, the nurse came in, carrying the child asleep in her arms, covered
with a thin gauze veil. Gloria started, and then smiled mechanically as
she had trained herself to smile whenever the child was brought to her.
The nurse laid the small thing in its cradle, and Gloria, as in a dream,
put the books and the clothes back into the box, and was glad that the
nurse asked no questions. When she had shut down the lid, she rose to
her feet and saw that