harm of Sally's baby features--and add still again
that fallacious sense of social position by which Traill realized
that such a girl he could not ask promiscuously out to dinner, could
not casually persuade to come to his rooms, and you have, besides
the unavoidable comparison between the two in his mind, that subtle
difference which a life of ease and a life of labour makes in the
position of women to a man's conception of the sex.

Immediately they stepped outside the theatre into the blaze of light
where the attendants were rushing for carriages, and men and women,
in a confused mass, jostled each other to fight free of the crowd,
Traill's eyes searched quickly for a sight of Sally. Mrs. Durlacher
also was alert to the possibility of finding her watching their
movements. But they saw no trace of her.

In the mouth of a little alley, deep with shadows, on the other side
of St. Martin's Lane, she was standing, her heart throbbing, half
timidly, half jealously, yet secure in the knowledge that she was
safe from observation. With eyes, burnt in the fever of a fierce
emotion, she watched them as they stepped into the car that drew up
beneath the lighted portico. When she saw Mrs. Durlacher's gesture
inviting Traill to sit between them on the back seat; when she saw
him willingly accept, notwithstanding that there was more room, more
comfort in the seat opposite, she drew in a breath between her teeth,
and the nails of her fingers bit into the palms of her hands. Now,
from what little she had seen in the theatre, and taking into greatest
consideration of all the proof of her own eyes that the woman was
beautiful, eclipsing herself at every point of attraction, Sally was
full-swept into the mad whirlpool of unreasoning jealousy. Every
action and every incident that her starved eyes fed upon were
distorted, embittered to the taste as though the taint of aloes had
crept into everything.

She thought she saw him lay his hand upon hers as he took the place
beside her. In that position she knew that they would be wedged close
together, their limbs touching, thrilling his senses as she well knew
she herself had thrilled them by even slighter proximity than that.
Here, too, she judged again by the lowest of standards, if judgment
it can be said of a wild flinging of thoughts--vitriol hurled in a
moment of madness. Yet against him she could find no bitterness. The
woman, kissing the hand that strikes her, to shield it from the