agedy, was enacted before her gaze. She was not frightened;
she was not even excited; the thing was so astonishing that she did not
quite grasp its full import till she saw Palura stumbling back, shot
again and again. Daisy caught her arm and clutched it in dumb panic, and
when the policeman calmly bent the cohorts of the dead man to his will
and carried away his victims, Daisy dragged Nelia away.

Then Daisy disappeared and Nelia was left to her own devices.

She was vexed and disappointed. She knew nothing of the war in Mendova.
Politics had never engaged her attention, and the significance of the
artistic killing of Palura did not appear to her mind. She was simply
possessed by an indignant feminine impatience to think that Terabon had
escaped, and she was angry when she had only that glimpse of him, as
with his notebook in hand he raced his pencil across the blank pages,
jotting down the details and the hasty, essential impressions as he
caught them.

She heard the exodus. She heard women sobbing and men gasping as they
swore and fled. She gathered up her own cloak and left with reluctant
footsteps.

She realized that she had arrived there just one day too late to "do"
Palura's. The fugitives, as they scurried by, reminded her of some
description which she had read of the Sack of Rome; or was it the Fall
of Babylon? Their sins were being visited upon the wicked, and Nelia
Crele, since she had not sinned, could not thrill with quite the same
terror and despair of the wretches who had sinned in spite of their
consciences, instead of through ignorance or wantonness. She took her
departure not quite able to understand why there had been so much furore
because one man had been killed.

She was among the last to leave the accursed place, and she saw the
flight of the ones who had delayed, perhaps to loot, perhaps having just
awakened to the fact of the tragedy. She turned toward Mousa Slough, and
her little shanty-boat seemed very cool and bare that late evening. The
bookshelves were all empty, and she was just a little too tired to
sleep, just a little too stung by reaction to be happy, and rather too
much out of temper to be able to think straight and clearly on the
disappointment.

Mendova had been familiar in her ears since childhood; she had heard
stories of its wildness, its gayeties, its recklessness. Impression had
been made upon impression, so that when she had found herself nearing
the place of her dreams