sin in it. What sin could there be? Janet's
arguments had penetrated more deeply into her mind than she had ever
imagined. When, on rare occasions, she was alone in the hotel where
they happened to be staying--and it was then that doubt, while there
was any, oppressed her--she hugged Janet's sayings to her mind,
forced them to support her. "You're only a conventionalist, like
everybody else--you're not a moralist."

Now she was a moralist, or nothing. She had cut the last link with
convention and, at a moment such as that, the realization that there
was no returning, no getting back, obsessed her with a shuddering
fear. She did not understand that she was conventionalist still at
heart; she did not divine that she was not the great woman, loving
greatly--only the lesser woman, loving, it is true, with all the
utmost of her personality, but loving less.

There is no conventionality in greatness. Great natures make laws
for lesser natures to obey; and, far though she had gone from the
broad path where the little people huddle on their way, the blood
of the little people was in her veins and conventionality still held
its claim upon her. She liked to think that she was married. It was
beyond the strength of her mind to look upon herself as the mistress
of the man she loved.

"It cannot end--it can never end," she told herself. "He loves me
too much and I love him better still. It's as good--quite as good,
as being married. The Church makes no difference." She thought of
her father, remembering how, through the very precepts of that very
Church, he had found retribution. So people, who married with the
Church's sanction, found retribution too. Some lives were miserable;
she had known them. What good had the blessing of the Church been
to them? None!

Then Traill would return to her and doubts would vanish like shadows
that a light disperses. They were happy. She had never conceived of
such happiness before. Her mood was one of continual gratitude. She
thanked him for everything--if not with lips, then with eyes.

"You remind me of a little starved gutter-arab, whenever I give you
anything," he once said, when he had brought her back from a theatre
in Rome and given her supper in the restaurant of the Quirinale.

"Not very complimentary," she replied without objection.

"Well--you look at me that way--as if I were giving you God's earth
for God's sake. Have you never been happy before in your life?"

"Never."

"I