y,
chastised as one would chastise a dog."

And with that he struck Richard again and again across the face with
those metal-buttoned gloves.

Mad with rage, blinded and sick with pain, Dickie essayed to fling
himself upon his assailant. But Destournelle was too adroit for him. He
skipped aside, with his little, bleating, goat-like laugh, and Richard
fell heavily full length, his forehead coming in contact with the lower
step of the descent from the back of the box. He lay there, too weak to
raise himself.

Paul Destournelle bent down and again examined him curiously.

"_C'est etonnant!_" he repeated.--He gave the prostrate body a
contemptuous kick. "Dear madame, are you sufficiently avenged? Is it
enough?" he inquired sneeringly.

And vaguely, as from some incalculable distance, Richard heard Helen de
Vallorbes' voice:--"Yes--it is a little affair of honour which dates
from my childhood. It has taken many years in adjusting. I thank you,
_mon cher_, a thousand times. Now let us go quickly. It is enough."

Then came darkness, silence, rest.

BOOK VI

THE NEW HEAVEN AND THE NEW EARTH

CHAPTER I

IN WHICH MISS ST. QUENTIN BEARS WITNESS TO THE FAITH THAT IS IN HER

Honoria divested herself of her traveling-cap, thrust her hands into
the pockets of her frieze ulster, and thus, bareheaded, a tall, supple,
solitary figure, paced the railway platform in the dusk. Above the
gentle undulations of the western horizon splendours of rose-crimson
sunset were outspread, veiled, as they flamed upward, by indigo cloud
of the texture and tenuity of finest gauze. And those same rose-crimson
splendours found repetition upon the narrow, polished surface of the
many lines of rails, causing them to stand out, as though of red-hot
metal, from the undeterminate gray-drab of the track where it curved
away, southeastward, across the darkening country towards the Savoy
Alps. And from out the fastnesses of these last, quick with the bleak
purity of snow, came a breathing of evening wind. To Honoria it brought
refreshing emphasis of silence, and of immunity from things human and
things mechanical. It spoke to her of virgin and unvisited spaces,
ignorant of mankind and of obligation to his so many and so insistent
needs. And there being in Honoria herself a kindred defiance of
subjection, a determination, so to speak, of physical and emotional
chastity, she welcomed these intimations of the essential inviolability
of