ll
claws and expletives, and herself caught in a clasp which shook the
breath from her.

One can dimly reconstruct James's train of thought. He is in despair;
things are going badly at the theatre, and life has lost its savour.
His eye, as he sits, is caught by Elizabeth's profile. It is a
pretty--above all, a soothing--profile. An almost painful
sentimentality sweeps over James Boyd. There she sits, his only friend
in this cruel city. If you argue that there is no necessity to spring
at your only friend and nearly choke her, you argue soundly; the point
is well taken. But James Boyd was beyond the reach of sound argument.
Much rehearsing had frayed his nerves to ribbons. One may say that he
was not responsible for his actions.

That is the case for James. Elizabeth, naturally, was not in a position
to take a wide and understanding view of it. All she knew was that James
had played her false, abused her trust in him. For a moment, such was
the shock of the surprise, she was not conscious of indignation--or,
indeed, of any sensation except the purely physical one of
semi-strangulation. Then, flushed, and more bitterly angry than she
could ever have imagined herself capable of being, she began to
struggle. She tore herself away from him. Coming on top of her
grievance, this thing filled her with a sudden, very vivid hatred of
James. At the back of her anger, feeding it, was the humiliating
thought that it was all her own fault, that by her presence there she
had invited this.

She groped her way to the door. Something was writhing and struggling
inside her, blinding her eyes, and robbing her of speech. She was only
conscious of a desire to be alone, to be back and safe in her own home.
She was aware that he was speaking, but the words did not reach her.
She found the door, and pulled it open. She felt a hand on her arm, but
she shook it off. And then she was back behind her own door, alone and
at liberty to contemplate at leisure the ruins of that little temple of
friendship which she had built up so carefully and in which she had
been so happy.

The broad fact that she would never forgive him was for a while her
only coherent thought. To this succeeded the determination that she
would never forgive herself. And having thus placed beyond the pale the
only two friends she had in New York, she was free to devote herself
without hindrance to the task of feeling thoroughly lonely and
wretched.

The shadows deepened. A