head. But it was with
her heart alone that Sally craved for its continuance. It was the
last she was to see of him; the last time that he would be in her
bedroom where all the passionate associations of her life would
always lie buried. Can it be wondered that she would willingly have
dragged the misery of it through all that night, if only to keep him
for the moments as they passed, by her side?

Yet he was driven to play the mean part--the part for which there
never will be--perhaps never should be--any sympathy. And he must
play it with the best grace he could. A man is always a spectator
to his own actions; a woman, in her emotions--never. So women lose
their self-respect more easily than men.

But Traill was not the type to allow these abstract considerations
to worry him. The love in him she found to be dead. He was not even
moved by the piteousness of her appeal. There, then, it must end.
It was not his nature to choose the most graceful, the kindest way
to end it. He snapped it off as, across the knees, you break a faggot
for the burning. And that, too, is the only way to do it.

"I didn't come up here," he said, "to discuss anything. The whole
thing's discussed in my mind. When I saw you running after the car,
pushing your way along the gutter--that ended it. You'd better read
through your settlement now and if you don't think I've been generous
enough, tell me to-morrow morning. I shall be downstairs till
eleven."

He opened the door--passed through--closed it. She listened to each
one of his steps as he descended the stairs, her mouth hanging open,
her eyes struck in a fixed glare at the spot where he had stood. Then,
when she heard him close his door below, she just crumpled up in an
abandoned heap upon the floor, and with each breath she
moaned--"Oh--oh--oh."

Traill, undressing below, heard it. With a muttered exclamation, he
dragged his shirt over his head and flung it violently into the corner
of the room amongst the bundle of dirty linen.

END OF BOOK II

BOOK III

DERELICT

CHAPTER I

Virtue is the personality of many women. Rob them of it, those of
them whose value it enhances, and you prize a jewel from its setting,
you wrench a star out of the mystery of the heavens and bring it down
to earth. It is a common trend of the mind in these modern days to
make nobility out of the women whose personality needs no virtue to
lift it to a pedestal of fame. But really, it is the