g to herself that she could
stop now, and could stop now, at each stage of the advance to a fresh
dressing of her person, and moralizing on her singular fate, in the
mouth of an observer. 'She was shot up suddenly over everybody's head,
and suddenly down she went.' Susan whispered to herself: 'But it was
for love!' Possessed by the rosiness of love, she finished her business,
with an attention to everything needed that was equal to perfect
serenity of mind. After which there was nothing to do, save to sit
humped in a chair, cover her face and count the clock-tickings, that
said, Yes--no; do--don't; fly--stay; fly--fly! It seemed to her she
heard a moving. Well she might with that dreadful heart of hers!

Chloe was asleep, at peace by this time, she thought; and how she envied
Chloe! She might be as happy, if she pleased. Why not? But what kind of
happiness was it? She likened it to that of the corpse underground, and
shrank distastefully.

Susan stood at her glass to have a look at the creature about whom there
was all this disturbance, and she threw up her arms high for a languid,
not unlovely yawn, that closed in blissful shuddering with the sensation
of her lover's arms having wormed round her waist and taken her while
she was defenceless. For surely they would. She took a jewelled ring,
his gift, from her purse, and kissed it, and drew it on and off her
finger, leaving it on. Now she might wear it without fear of inquiries
and virtuous eyebrows. O heavenly now--if only it were an hour hence;
and going behind galloping horses!

The clock was at the terrible moment. She hesitated internally and
hastened; once her feet stuck fast, and firmly she said, 'No'; but the
clock was her lord. The clock was her lover and her lord; and obeying
it, she managed to get into the sitting-room, on the pretext that she
merely wished to see through the front window whether daylight was
coming.

How well she knew that half-light of the ebb of the wave of darkness.

Strange enough it was to see it showing houses regaining their solidity
of the foregone day, instead of still fields, black hedges, familiar
shapes of trees. The houses had no wakefulness, they were but seen to
stand, and the light was a revelation of emptiness. Susan's heart was
cunning to reproach her duke for the difference of the scene she beheld
from that of the innocent open-breasted land. Yes, it was dawn in a
wicked place that she never should have been allowed to