y. She could fancy evil spirits tripping to it in
swarms around her. They seemed to point at her, and wave their arms
around her, and from them came an influence, magnetic in its quality,
that forbade her to resist. All had been pre-arranged. Nothing could
avert it. She seemed to be waiting rather than acting. Against her inner
judgment, she had allowed those accursed practices to go on. Against her
instinct, she had permitted Henriette to become intimate at Dunaghee;
indeed it would have been hard to avoid it, for Miss Temperley was not
easy to discourage. Why had she assured Hadria so pointedly that Hubert
would not misinterpret her consent to renew the practices? Was it not a
sort of treachery? Had not Henriette, with her larger knowledge of the
world, been perfectly well aware that whatever might be said, the
renewal of the meetings would be regarded as encouragement? Did she not
know that Hadria herself would feel implicated by the concession?

Temperley's long silence had been misleading. The danger had crept up
insidiously. And had she not been treacherous to herself? She had longed
for companionship, for music, for something to break the strain of her
wild, lonely life. Knowing, or rather half-divining the risk, she had
allowed herself to accept the chance of relief when it came. Lack of
experience had played a large part in the making of to-night's dilemma.
Hadria's own strange mood was another ally to her lover, and for that,
old Mrs. McPherson and her reels were chiefly responsible. Of such
flimsy trifles is the human fate often woven.

"Tell me, did you ask your sister to----?"

"No, no," Hubert interposed. "My sister knows of my hopes, and is
anxious that I should succeed."

"I thought that she was helping you."

"She would take any legitimate means to help me," said Hubert. "You
cannot resent that. Ah, Hadria, why will you not listen to me?" He bent
forward, covering his face with his hands in deep dejection. His hope
had begun to wane.

"You know what I think," said Hadria. "You know how I should act if I
married. Surely that ought to cure you of all----."

He seized her hand.

"No, no, nothing that you may think could cure me of the hope of making
you my wife. I care for what you _are_, not for what you _think_. You
know how little I cling to the popular version of the domestic story. I
have told you over and over again that it offends me in a thousand ways.
I hate the _bourgeois_ element in it.