the punishment which is sure, sooner or later, to
follow their apostasy; and they do well to recognise this, ere they grow
weary of waiting for the revelation from Sinai, and begin to build
altars unto false gods. For now, as of old, the idols which they make
are ground into powder, and strawed upon the water, and given them to
drink; the cup has to be drained to the dregs, and it is exceeding
bitter.

"I still think he ought to have told me there was another woman,"
Elisabeth said.

"Not he. He knew well enough that your pride could not have endured the
thought of another woman, and that that would have spoiled his chance
with you forever. There always is another woman, you know; and you
women, who are too proud to endure the thought of her, have to be
deceived and blinded. And you have only yourselves to thank for it; if
you were a little more human and a little more tender, there would be no
necessity for deceiving you. Why, I should have loved him just the same
if there had been a hundred other women, so he always told me the truth;
but he lied to you, and it was your fault and not his that he was
obliged to lie."

Elisabeth shuddered. It was to help such a man as this that she had been
willing to sacrifice her youthful ideals and her girlish dreams. What a
fool she had been!

"If you do not believe me, here is his letter," Quenelda went on; "I
brought it on purpose for you to read, just to show you how little you
are to him. If you had loved him as I love him, I would have let you
keep him, because you could have given him so many of the things that he
thinks most about. But you don't. You are one of the cold, hard women,
who only care for people as long as they are good and do what you think
they ought to do; Cecil never could do what anybody thought he ought to
do for long, and then you would have despised him and grown tired of
him. But I go on loving him just the same, whatever he does; and that's
the sort of love that a man wants--at any rate, such a man as Cecil."

Elisabeth held out her hand for the letter; she felt that speech was of
no avail at such a crisis as this; and, as she read, every word burned
itself into her soul, and hurt her pride to the quick.

* * * * *

"DEAREST QUENELDA" (the letter ran, in the slightly affected handwriting
which Elisabeth had learned to know so well, and to welcome with so much
interest), "I have something to say to you which it cuts