word how the
Journalists will curse! They protect the morality of the nation you
know--on paper."

He was gone. As the carriage drove away Catherine saw his beautiful, and
yet rather dreadful, eyes gleaming with mischievous excitement. Suddenly
she felt heavy-hearted. Those last words of his cleared away any mist of
doubt that lingered about her own terror. She recognised fully for the
first time the essential difference between Mark and Berrand. Mark was
really possessed by the spirit of the artist, was driven by something
strange and dominating within him to do what he did. Berrand was
possessed by a spirit of mischievous devilry, by the poor and degrading
desire to shock and startle the world at whatever cost. For the moment
Catherine mentally saw Mark in a light of nobility; Berrand in a
darkness of degradation.

Yet--this thought followed in a moment,--Berrand was harmless to the
world, while Mark--

"Kitty, come in here," called her husband's voice from the study. "I
want to consult you about this last chapter."

In the Autumn "William Foster's" new book was issued by an "advanced"
publisher, who loved to hear his wares called dangerous, and who walked
on air when the reviewers said that such men as he were a curse to
Society--as they occasionally did when there was nothing special to
write about.

In the autumn also Mrs. Ardagh's illness grew worse and it appeared that
she could not live much longer. Catherine was terribly grieved, and was
for a time so much engaged with her mother that she scarcely heeded what
was going on in the world around. Incessantly immured in the sick-room
she did not trace the progress of the snake through Society until--as
Berrand had foretold--the cries of the Journalists rose to Heaven like
cries from a burning city. "William Foster" was held up to execration so
universal that his book could hardly be printed in sufficient quantities
to satisfy the demands of a public frantically eager to be harmed. In
her sick-room Mrs. Ardagh, now not far from death, yet still religiously
interested in the well-being of the world she was leaving, heard the
echoes of the journalistic cries. Some friend, perhaps, conveyed them.
For Catherine was silent on the matter, keeping a silence of fear and of
shame. And these echoes stayed with the dying woman, as stay the voices
in the hills.

One night, when Catherine came into her mother's room, Mrs. Ardagh was
crying feebly. On the sheet of the bed