on--she knew--would say she had no claim on him, and the sooner an
illegal tie was broken, the better! But she felt fully as wretched as if
she had been married. She had not wanted to be outside morality; never
in her life wanted to be that. She was like those who by confession shed
their sins and start again with a clear conscience. She never meant to
sin, only to love, and when she was in love, nothing else mattered for
the moment. But, though a gambler, she had always so far paid up. Only,
this time the stakes were the heaviest a woman can put down. It was
her last throw; and she knew it. So long as a woman believed in her
attraction, there was hope, even when the curtain fell on a love-affair!
But for Leila the lamp of belief had suddenly gone out, and when this
next curtain dropped she felt that she must sit in the dark until old
age made her indifferent. And between forty-four and real old age a gulf
is fixed. This was the first time a man had tired of her. Why! he had
been tired before he began, or so she felt. In one swift moment as of a
drowning person, she saw again all the passages of their companionship,
knew with certainty that it had never been a genuine flame. Shame ran,
consuming, in her veins. She buried her face in the cushions. This girl
had possessed his real heart all the time. With a laugh she thought: 'I
put my money on the wrong horse; I ought to have backed Edward. I could
have turned that poor monk's head. If only I had never seen Jimmy again;
if I had torn his letter up, I could have made poor Edward love me!'
Ifs! What folly! Things happened as they must!

And, starting up, she began to roam the little room. Without Jimmy she
would be wretched, with him she would be wretched too! 'I can't bear
to see his face,' she thought; 'and I can't live here without him! It's
really funny!' The thought of her hospital filled her with loathing. To
go there day after day with this despair eating at her heart--she simply
could not. She went over her resources. She had more money than she
thought; Jimmy had given her a Christmas present of five hundred pounds.
She had wanted to tear up the cheque, or force him to take it back; but
the realities of the previous five years had prevailed with her, and she
had banked it. She was glad now. She had not to consider money. Her mind
sought to escape in the past. She thought of her first husband, Ronny
Fane; of their mosquito-curtained rooms in that ghastly Madras heat.