lism? Impossible! There can be no feigning of purity, honesty,
joy. That is where the pretences of humanity collapse. In such a
pretence as that simulated passion--the ultimate baseness, breaks down,
creates no illusion, and is foiled.

But on the face of it, what an appalling story! It brought him
violently to earth. He could not move, but sat staring at the woman,
wanting to tell her that she lied, but knowing that she had spoken
according to the truth of the letter. Of the truth of the spirit she
could most patently know nothing. Her world was composed of dull facts
and smouldering emotions. She could know nothing of the world where
emotions flamed into passion to burn the facts into golden emblems of
truth. And that was Clara's world: the world in which for two days he
had been privileged to dwell, a world in which soul could speak to soul
and laugh at all the confusion of fact and detail in which they must
otherwise be ensnared.... Mann, Verschoyle, a swift success in the
theatre--the facts were of the kind that had induced the horror in
which until he met her he had lived. His meeting with her had
dispelled his horror, but the facts remained. He in his solitude might
ignore them and dream on, but could she? Surely he owed it to her to
offer her what through her he had won.... And then--to buy off the
wretched woman, surely she could never have submitted to that!

He began to think of Charles Mann with a blistering, jealous hatred.

'I think I'd have killed myself,' said Kitty, 'if it had gone on. I
don't wish them any harm now that he's paid up.... I wouldn't have
said a word about it to any one, only she's so young. It did give me a
bit of a shock, and Charles getting on, too. He's quite gray and has a
bit of a stomach. I never thought he'd be the one to get fat. I'm all
skin and bone. Look at my arms.'

Rodd left her. When he opened the door he was relieved to find that
the unpleasant Claude had gone. Mrs Messenger was sitting by the fire
in the front room, her skirts tucked up about her knees, and a glass of
port on the mantelpiece. She turned her head with a leer and said,--

'Good luck! I always thought she was keen on you.... It's time she
settled down. She was born to be respectable, and to look after a man.
That's all most girls are fit for. But in the theatre a girl's got to
look after number one or go down and out.'

The old woman with the painted face and dyed hair made