look up. Chiltern was coming
back. She glanced again at the farmer, but his face was equally
incapable, or equally unwilling, to express regret. Chiltern rode into
the dooryard. The blood from the scratch on his forehead had crossed his
temple and run in a jagged line down his cheek, his very hair (as she had
sometimes seen it) was damp with perspiration, blacker, kinkier; his eyes
hard, reckless, bloodshot. So, in the past, must he have emerged from
dozens of such wilful, brutal contests with man and beast. He had beaten
the sweat-stained horse (temporarily--such was the impression Honora
received), but she knew that he would like to have killed it for its
opposition.

"Give me my hat, will you?" he cried to the farmer.

To her surprise the man obeyed. Chiltern leaped to the ground.

"What do you want for him?" he demanded.

"I'll take five hundred dollars."

"Bring him over in the morning," said Chiltern, curtly.

They rode homeward in silence. Honora had not been able to raise her
voice against the purchase, and she seemed powerless now to warn her
husband of the man's enmity. She was thinking, rather, of the horror of
the tragedy written on the farmer's face, to which he had given her the
key: Hugh Chiltern, to whom she had intrusted her life and granted her
all, had done this thing, ruthlessly, even as he had satisfied to-day his
unbridled cravings in maltreating a horse! And she thought of that other
woman, on whose picture she had refused to look. What was the essential
difference between that woman and herself? He had wanted them both, he
had taken them both for his pleasure, heedless of the pain he might cause
to others and to them. For her, perhaps, the higher organism, had been
reserved the higher torture. She did not know. The vision of the girl in
the outer darkness reserved for castaways was terrible.

Up to this point she had, as it were, been looking into one mirror. Now
another was suddenly raised behind her, and by its aid she beheld not a
single, but countless, images of herself endlessly repeated. How many
others besides this girl had there been? The question gave her the
shudder of the contemplation of eternity. It was not the first time
Honora had thought of his past, but until today it had lacked reality;
until to-day she had clung to the belief that he had been misunderstood;
until to-day she had considered those acts of his of the existence of
which she was collectively aware under the ge