alustrade of the piazza, to cry convulsively. She remembered her pity
for old age, for the monstrous loss it cannot cease from advertising.
And now she, in her youth, had passed it on the road to the pit. Lady
Cardington was a beautiful woman. She pitied herself bitterly because
she was morbid, as many beautiful women are when they approach old age.
But she was beautiful. She would always be beautiful. She might not
think it, but she was still a power, could still inspire love. In
her blanched face framed in white hair there was in truth a wonderful
attraction.

Whiteness--Lady Holme shuddered when she thought of whiteness,
remembering what the glass had shown her.

Fritz--his animal passion for her--his horror of her now--Miss
Schley--their petty, concealed strife--Rupert Carey's love--Leo Ulford's
desire of conquest--his father's strange, pathetic devotion--Winter
falling at the feet of Spring--figures and events from the panorama of
her life now ended flickered through her almost numbed mind, while the
tears still ran down her face.

And Robin Pierce?

As she thought of him more life quickened in her mind.

Since her accident he had written to her several times, ardent,
tender letters, recalling all he had said to her, recounting again his
adoration of her for her nature, her soul, the essence of her, the woman
in her, telling her that this terror which had come upon her only made
her dearer to him, that--as she knew--he had impiously dared almost to
long for it, as for an order of release that would take effect in the
liberation of her true self.

These letters she had read, but they had not stirred her. She had told
herself that Robin did not know, that he was a self-deceiver, that he
did not understand his own nature, which was allied to the nature of
every living man. But now, seeking some, even the smallest solace in
the intense agony of desolation that was upon her, she caught--in her
bleeding woman's heart--at this hand stretched out from Rome. She got
up, went to her bedroom, unlocked her despatch-box, took out these
letters of Robin's. They had not stirred her, yet she had kept them.
Now she came down once more to the piazza, sat by the tea-table, opened
them, read them, re-read them, whispered them over again and again.
Something she must have; some hand she must catch at. She could not die
in this freezing cold which she had never known, this cold that came out
of the Inferno, at whose cavern mouth