ger than usual,
smiling straight into her eyes; and the strong enfolding pressure, far
from unsteadying her, seemed rather to revive her flagging fortitude.
For who shall estimate the virtue that goes out from the hand-clasp of
a brave man, to whose courage is added the strength of a stainless
mind?

* * * * *

At last it was over.

She had left the husband and wife together, happy in a reconciliation
of her own making; had dismissed Parbutti, bolted the door behind her,
and now stood like one dazed, alone with God and her grief, which
already seemed old as the stars,--a thing preordained before the
beginning of time.

She never thought of turning up the lamp; but remained standing very
straight and still, her hands clenched, all the pride of her
maidenhood up in arms against that which dominated her, by no will of
her own.

She knew now, past question,--and the certainty crimsoned her face and
neck,--that she had loved him unwittingly from the moment of meeting;
possibly even from that earlier moment when she had unerringly picked
out his face from among many others. Herein lay the key to her
instinctive recoil from too rapid intimacy; the key to the peculiar
quality of her intercourse with him, which had been from the first a
thing apart; as far removed from her friendship with Wyndham as is the
serenity of the foothills from the life-giving breath of the heights.

And now--now that she had been startled into knowledge, the whole
truth must be confronted, the better to be combated;--the truth that
she loved him--with everything in her--with every thought, every
instinct of soul and body. Nay, more, in the very teeth of her shame
and self-abasement, she knew that she was glad and proud to have loved
him, and no lesser man, even though the fair promise of her womanhood
were doomed to go down unfulfilled into the grave.

Not for a moment did she entertain the cheap consolatory thought that
she would get over it; or would, in time, give some good man the husk
of her heart in exchange for the first-fruits of his own. She held the
obsolete opinion that marriage unconsecrated by love was a deadlier
sin than the one into which she had fallen unawares; and which, at
least, need not tarnish or sadden any life save her own. This last
brought her sharply into collision with practical issues. In the face
of her discovery, dared she--ought she to remain even a week longer
under Theo's roof?