, in spite of her uneasiness, the wicked woman trembled with
delight at the thought of her work.

CHAPTER VIII

ON THE GROUND

When Maud Gorka left the house on the Rue Leopardi she walked on at first
rapidly, blindly, without seeing, without hearing anything, like a
wounded animal which runs through the thicket to escape danger, to escape
its wounds, to escape itself. It was a little more than half-past three
o'clock when the unhappy woman hastened from the studio, unable to bear
near her the presence of Lydia Maitland, of that sinister worker of
vengeance who had so cruelly revealed to her, with such indisputable
proofs, the atrocious affair, the long, the infamous, the inexpiable
treason.

It was almost six o'clock before Maud Gorka really regained
consciousness. A very common occurrence aroused her from the somnambulism
of suffering in which she had wandered for two hours. The storm which had
threatened since noon at length broke. Maud, who had scarcely heeded the
first large drops, was forced to seek shelter when the clouds suddenly
burst, and she took refuge at the right extremity of the colonnade of St.
Peter's. How had she gone that far? She did not know herself precisely.
She remembered vaguely that she had wandered through a labyrinth of small
streets, had crossed the Tiber--no doubt by the Garibaldi bridge--had
passed through a large garden--doubtless the Janicule, since she had
walked along a portion of the ramparts. She had left the city by the
Porte de Saint-Pancrace, to follow by that of Cavallegieri the sinuous
line of the Urban walls.

That corner of Rome, with a view of the pines of the Villa Pamfili on one
side, and on the other the back part of the Vatican, serves as a
promenade during the winter for the few cardinals who go in search of the
afternoon sun, certain there of meeting only a few strangers. In the
month of May it is a desert, scorched by the sun, which glows upon the
brick, discolored by two centuries of that implacable heat which caresses
the scales of the green and gray lizards about to crawl between the bees
of Pope Urbain VIII's escutcheon of the Barberini family. Madame Gorka's
instinct had at least served her in leading her upon a route on which she
met no one. Now the sense of reality returned. She recognized the objects
around her, and that framework, so familiar to her piety of fervent
Catholicism, the enormous square, the obelisk of Sixte-Quint in the
centre, the fou