dy, and you might tell Edwin Clayhanger.--Your
loving H. L." Least said soonest mended! And the conciseness would
discourage questioning. She inserted the letter into an envelope, which
she addressed and stamped, and then she fled with it from the house, and
in two minutes it was in a letter-box, and she was walking slowly along
the King's Road past the shops.

The letter was the swift and desperate sequel to several days'
absolutely sterile reflection. It said enough for the moment. Later, she
could explain that her husband had left her. She could not write to
Edwin. She could not bring herself to write anything to him. She could
not confess, nor beg for forgiveness nor even for sympathetic
understanding. She could not admit the uninstructed rashness which had
led her to assume positively, on inadequate grounds, that her union with
George Cannon had been fruitless. She must suffer, and he also must
suffer. Rather than let him know, in any conceivable manner, that, all
unwitting, she was bearing the child of another at the moment of her
betrothal to himself, she preferred to be regarded as a jilt of the very
worst kind. Strange that she should choose the role of deceiver instead
of the role of victim! Strange that she would sooner be hated and
scorned than pitied! Strange that she would not even give Edwin the
opportunity of treating her as a widow! But so it was! For her, the one
possible attitude towards Edwin was the attitude of silence. In the
silence of the grave her love for him existed.

As she walked along the chill promenade she looked with discreet
curiosity at every woman she met, to see her condition. This matter,
which before she had never thought of, now obsessed her; and all women
were divided for her into two classes, the expectant and the others.
Also her self-consciousness was extreme, more so even than it had been
after her mother's death. She was not frightened--yet. She was assuredly
not panic-struck. Rather her mood was grim, harsh, and calmly bitter.
She thought: "I suppose George must be informed." It affected her
queerly that if she took it into her head she need never go back to
Preston Street. She was free. She owed nothing to anybody. And yet she
would go back. She would require a home, soon. And she would require a
livelihood, for the shares of the Brighton Hotel Continental Limited
promised to be sterile and were already unsaleable. But apart from these
considerations, she would have gone