That night she was able to realise the truth of what she had been told.
She had gone out to dine with some new acquaintance; Ted had called for
her to take her home, and they were walking back along the Embankment,
when they came suddenly upon Hardy. He was standing under a gas-lamp,
talking to somebody, or rather listening to somebody talking. He turned
his back on them as they passed, but there was no mistaking his figure
in the glare of the false daylight. As for his companion, Katherine was
aware of something in satin skirts which the gaslight ran over like
water--something that smelt of musk and had hair the colour of brass.
She walked on without a word, sick at heart. This was the first time she
had been brought face to face with the hideous side of life. Like many
good women, she thoroughly realised the existence of evil in the
abstract; but evil incarnate in a person--it was hard to associate that
with any one she knew as she had known Vincent. Her artistic nature was
morbidly sensitive to impressions taken in through the eye, and nothing
could have so forced home the truth as that little scene, suddenly
flashed on her out of the London night. But now that she had seen, it
was not the horror that she felt, but the pity of it. She remembered
Vincent's face when she had shown him Audrey's picture. Her thoughts
went further back. She remembered him a boy, playing with her in a
lordly manner, as befitted his sex; or a young man, coming and going in
her father's home with frank, brotherly ways. She remembered how she had
grudged the time she gave him, and the relief she felt when he left off
coming. But she could not remember anywhere the least sign of what he
had become.

Something ought to be done--she could not clearly say what. Writing to
his people, as Mrs. Rogers had suggested, was out of the question. She
knew too well the state of things in his home. To be sure, there was his
uncle, Sir Theophilus Parker, whom he had expectations from; but for
that very reason the old gentleman was the last person whom it would be
advisable to inform of Vincent's conduct. Relations failing, there
remained his friends; and she only knew two of these--herself and Ted.

All that was most fine and sensitive in her nature cried out against the
burden she knew she would have to lay on it. But her humanity was so
deeply moved by the tragedy she had twice been an unwilling spectator
of, that she never so much as dreamed of asking,