sm which so often colours
the judgments men pass on women and women on men. Then had come love,
against which he had striven in vain, and gradually, out of love,
had grown a new tentative belief which the pitiful culmination of the
Raynham episode had suddenly and very completely shattered.

Of late, circumstances had combined to impress on Magda an altogether
new point of view--the viewpoint from which other people might
conceivably regard her actions. She had never troubled about such a
thing before, nor was she finding the experience at all a pleasant one.
But it helped her to understand to a certain extent--though still
only in a very modified degree--the influences which had sent Michael
Quarrington out of England.

And now, in the passionate relief bred of the knowledge that he was
still free, that he had not gone straight from her to another woman,
much of the resentful hardness which had embittered her during the
last few months melted away, and she became once more the nonchalant,
tantalising but withal lovable and charming personality of former days.

She was even conscious of a certain compunction for her behaviour at
Stockleigh. She had been bitterly hurt herself, and since, for the
moment, to experiment with a new and, to her, quite unknown type of man
had amused her and helped to distract her thoughts, she had not paused
to consider the possible resultant consequences to the subject of the
experiment.

She endeavoured to solace herself with the belief that after she had
gone he would instinctively turn to June once more, and that life on the
farm would probably resume the even tenor of its way. Gradually, with
the passage of time, her thoughts reverted less and less often to the
happenings at Stockleigh, and the prickings of conscience--which beset
her return to London--grew considerably fainter and more infrequent.

It was almost inevitable that this should be so. With the autumn came
the stir and hustle of the season, with its thousand-and-one claims upon
her thought and time. The management of the Imperial Theatre was
nothing if not enterprising, and designed to present a series of ballets
throughout the course of the winter, in the greater number of which
Magda would be the bright and particular star. And in the absorption
of work and the sheer joy she found in the art which she loved, the
recollection of her holiday at Stockleigh slipped by degrees into the
background of her mind. Fraught with su