encumbrance
to his career. Had he told her that himself she would, with bowed
head, have accepted the inevitable; but, coming to her in this way,
this deep-laid plot and all the machinations of a woman whom, from
the very first, she had had good reason to despise, a devil of
jealousy was wakened in her. Obedience she might have given; her life
she would willingly have offered; yet when it was a subtle poison
that was being dropped into his mind to eat away his love for her,
all force in her nature rose uppermost and she was driven to ends
so foreign, so inconsistent with her whole being, that from that
moment Devenish scarcely recognized her as the same woman.

"I can't come to the music hall with you," she said suddenly.

He looked at her suspiciously.

"Why not?" he asked.

"I couldn't--I couldn't sit there--I--"

It was impossible not to feel sympathy for her. The hardest nature
in the world must yield its pity when the scourge of circumstance
falls upon the weak. Devenish only knew in part what she was suffering.
The mistress--deserted--is a position precarious enough,
undesirable enough for any man to realize and feel sympathy for. To
her mind, seeing that before her, he offered all such pity as he
possessed. But of the love wrenched from her life, the heart aching
with its overwhelming burden of misery, he saw nothing. She would
get over it. He knew that. Women did--women had to. She would settle
down into another type of existence. She would become some other
man's mistress. She would pull through. He looked at her childish
face and hoped she would pull through. The thought crossed his mind
that it would be a pity--a spoiling of something not meant to be
spoilt--if she lost caste and went on the streets. She deserved a
better fate than that. But it would never come to that.

"What are you going to do, then?" he asked quietly.

"Oh, I don't know--anything--I don't know."

"You won't do anything foolish?"

"Foolish? How? Foolish?"

He leant his elbows on the table, bearing his eyes direct upon hers.
The slight catch in her voice was breaking almost on a note of
hysteria.

"You're excited, you know," he said gently. "You know, you're
imagining things. You've got no grounds for them--I assure you you've
got no grounds. Come to the music hall with me and forget all about
it."

She shook her head.

"I couldn't," she replied; "I couldn't. I--I shan't do anything
foolish, but I think I'll go now--now-