by his strong
and shrewd masculinity. At the bottom of her soul she knew how wrong she
was. But she was ready to do anything to save Sarah Gailey from the
distress of one particular humiliation. With the whole of her volition
she wanted to win.

"Oh well!" he said. "Of course, if you take it so much to heart--"

A peculiar bright glance shot from his eyes--the old glance that at once
negligently asserted his power over her, and reassured her against his
power. Her being was suffused with gladness and pride. She had won. She
had won in defiance of reason. She had appealed and she had conquered.
And she enjoyed his glance. She gloried in it. She blushed. A spasm of
exquisite fear shot through her, and she savoured it deliciously. The
deep organic sadness of the house presented itself to her in a new
light. It was still sadness, but it was beautiful in the background. Her
sympathy for Sarah Gailey was as keen as ever, but it had a different
quality--an anguish less desolating. And the fact that a joint
responsibility for Sarah Gailey's welfare bound herself and George
Cannon together in spite of themselves--this fact seemed to her
grandiose and romantic, no longer oppressive. To be alone with him in
the secrecy of the small upper room seemed to endow her with a splendid
worldly importance. And yet all the time a scarce-heard voice was saying
clearly within her: "This appeal and this abandonment are unworthy. No
matter if this man is kind and sincere and admirable! This appeal and
this abandonment are unworthy!" But she did not care. She ignored the
voice.

"I'll tell Sarah in the morning," he said.

"Please don't!" she begged. "You might pretend later on that you've had
a letter from the Boutwoods and they can't come. If you tell her
to-morrow, she'll guess at once I've been talking to you; and you're not
supposed to know anything at all about what happened to-night. She made
me promise. But of course she didn't know that you'd found out for
yourself, you see!"

George Cannon walked away to the window, and then to the mantelpiece,
from which he took up the candle.

"I'm very much obliged to you," he said simply, putting a faint emphasis
on the last word. She knew that he meant it, without any reserves. But
in his urbane tone there was a chill tranquillity that astonished and
vaguely disappointed her.

* * * * *

BOOK IV
HER FALL

CHAPTER I
THE GOING CONCERN

I