but seemed to let them alone, and to influence them by just
being wonderful, beautiful, unself-consciously sacred.

At first Mrs. Clarke wandered slowly about the church, without any
purpose other than that of gathering to herself some of its atmosphere.
During the last few days she had been feeling really tormented. Dion had
once said she looked punished. Now he had made her feel punished. And
she sought a moment of peace. It could not come to her from mysticism,
but it might come to her from great art, which suggests to its votaries
mystery, the something beyond, untroubled and shiningly serene.

Presently Mrs. Clarke felt the peace of Santa Sophia, and she felt it in
a new way, because she had recently suffered, indeed was suffering still
in a new way; she felt it as something desirable, which might be of
value to her, if she were able to take it to herself and to fold it
about her own life. Had she made a mistake in living perilously through
many years? Her mind went to the woman who had abandoned Dion and
entered a Sisterhood to lead a religious life. She seldom thought about
Rosamund except in relation to Dion. She had scarcely known her, and
since her first few interviews with Dion in this land of the cypress he
had seldom mentioned his wife. She neither liked, nor actively disliked,
Rosamund, whose tacit rejection of her acquaintance had not stirred in
her any womanly hatred; for though she was a ruthless woman she was not
venomous towards other women. She did not bother about them enough for
that. But now she considered that other woman with whom she had shared
Dion Leith, or rather who, not knowing it doubtless, had shared Dion
Leith with her. And she wondered whether Rosamund, in her Sisterhood,
was happier than she was in the world. In the Sisterhood there must
surely be peace--monotony, drudgery, perhaps, but peace.

Santa Sophia, with its vast spaces, its airy dome, its great arches and
galleries, its walls of variegated marble, its glittering mosaics
and columns of porphyry, to-day made her realize that in her life of
adventure and passion she was driven, as if by a demon with a whip,
and that her horrible situation with Dion was but the culmination of
a series of horrible situations. She had escaped from them only after
devastating battles, in which she had had to use all her nervous energy
and all her force of will. Was it worth while? Was the game she was
always playing worth the candles she was alway