testably worried."--She
looked down at her finger-tips. Her expression became almost sombre.
"In any case I shall not plague you very much longer, Richard," she
said rather grandly. "I have determined to remove myself bag and
baggage. It is best, more dignified to do so. Reluctantly I own that.
Here have I no abiding city. I wish I had, perhaps, but I haven't.
Therefore it is useless, and worse than useless, to play at having one.
One must just face the truth."

She looked full at the young man, smiling at him, as though somehow
forgiving him a slight, an unkindness, a neglect.

"And so, just because to you it all matters so uncommonly little, let
us talk rather longer this evening."

She rose.

"I'll go on into the long drawing-room," she said. "The windows were
still open there when I came in to dinner. The room will be pleasantly
cool. You will come?"

And she moved away quietly, thoughtfully, opened the high double-doors,
left them open, and that without once looking back. Yet her hearing was
strained to catch the smallest sound above that which accompanied her,
namely, the rustling of her dress. Then a queer shiver ran all down her
spine and she set her teeth, for she perceived that halting, shuffling
footsteps had begun to follow those light and graceful footsteps of her
own.

"_Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute_," she said to herself. "I have
no fear for the rest."

Yet, crossing the near half of the great room, she sank down on a sofa,
thankful there was no farther to go. In the last few minutes she had
put forth more will-power, felt more deeply, than she had supposed. Her
knees gave under her. It was a relief to sit down.

The many candles in the cut-glass chandeliers, hanging from along the
centre of the painted ceiling, were lighted, filling the length and
breadth of the room with a bland, diffused radiance. It touched picture
and statue, tall mirror, rich curtain, polished woodwork of chair and
table, gleaming ebony and ivory cabinet. It touched Helen de Vallorbes'
bright head and the strings of pearls twisted in her hair, her white
neck, the swell of her bosom, and all that delicate wonder of
needlework--the Flanders' lace--trimming her bodice. It lay on her lap,
too, as she leaned back in the corner of the sofa, her hands pressed
down on either side her thighs--lay there bringing the pattern of her
brocaded dress into high relief. This was a design of pomegranates--leaves,
flowers, and frui