! She--Alice Robinson--had been under this wondrous delusion! Was
there anything more ridiculous since men and women were? Her laughter
could not be repressed, but it rang out through the studio weirdly, with
a strange note of hardness and bitterness, and somehow it echoed and
re-echoed through all the house, coming back to her mockingly from the
empty rooms beneath her.

Even when her laughter had died away she sat there brooding. And for the
first time there was mingled in her emotions a touch of pity for
Wyndham. She was conscious now of a softening, in spite of all. Poor
Wyndham! Had he not loved Lady Lakeden years before he had set eyes on
the Robinsons? If only he had not possessed that terrible code of
honour! He might then have come to her frankly and begged her
compassion! She would have released him. But he could not break his
word. His honour only allowed him to carry on an intrigue!

But time was passing, and she told herself she must not stay. She knew
she was defeated and must accept it: she must leave him to his intrigue,
whilst she herself stepped back into the old suburban existence!

She replaced the letters in the secret receptacle, and restored
everything in the bureau as it had been before. Then she dragged back
the screen before the picture, turning away her eyes resolutely so as
not to catch sight again of that gracious figure gleaming out in
exquisite radiance. The lamps were put back as she had found them, then
carefully extinguished. But the difficulty she had with them revealed to
her the tense nervous condition under which she was still labouring,
though she had appeared to herself quiet and resigned now. She stood in
the dark a moment, conscious of the suffocating closeness of the
atmosphere. How good it would be to be out in the air again! She would
walk on the Embankment for a few minutes, and then ingloriously go home
as fast as possible--in a hansom! having yielded to ignoble impulses and
played the role of a common spy. But in one way she at least had no
regret She was enlightened, knew as much of the position as Wyndham.

She descended the stairs, put out the lamps in the hall, and stepped
into the streets again. The cold air beat in her face deliciously; the
stars were brilliant in the pure sky. She looked up to them now
yearningly--their calm and beauty shamed the storm and fever in her own
mind. The street, too, seemed so exquisitely still in the splendid
darkness. She let her wr