ked him to beat her with a golf-stick--that the poor girl
loved Jaffery, heart and soul. I knew also that she made for herself no
illusions as to Jaffery's devotion to Doria. On that point her words to
me at Havre had left me in no doubt whatever. But since Havre all sorts
of extraordinary things had happened. There had been their intimate
comradeship in the savagery (from my point of view) of the last few
months. There was now Doria's awful change of soul-attitude towards
Adrian. It was right that Liosha should be made aware of the emotional
subtleties that underlay the bare facts. It seemed cruel to tell her of
the last scene, so pathetic, so tragic, so grotesque, between the man
she loved and the other woman. But her unflinching bravery and her great
heart demanded it. And as I told her, walking nervously about the room,
she followed me with her steadfast eyes.

"So that's why Jaff Chayne came abroad with me."

"I suppose so," said I.

"If I had been a man I should have strangled her, or flung her out of
the window."

"I dare say. But you wouldn't have been Jaff Chayne."

"That's true," she assented. "No man like him ever walked the earth. And
how a woman could be so puppy-blind as not to see it, I can't imagine."

"Her head was full of another man, you see."

"Oh yes, I see," she said with a touch of contempt. "And such a man! You
were fond of him I know. But he was a sham. He used to look on me, I
remember, as an amusing sort of animal out of the Zoological Gardens. It
never occurred to him that I had sense. He was a fool."

Intimately as we had known Liosha, this was the first time she had ever
expressed an opinion regarding Adrian. We had assumed that, having
touched her life so lightly, he had been but a shadowy figure in her
mind, and that, save in so far as his death concerned us, she had viewed
him with entire indifference. But her keen feminine brain had picked out
the fatal flaw in poor Adrian's character, the shallow glitter that made
us laugh and the want of vision from which he died.

"Go on," said Liosha.

I continued. In justice to Doria, I elaborated her reasons for setting
Adrian on his towering pinnacle. Liosha nodded. She understood. False
gods, whatever degree of godhead they usurped, had for a time the
mystifying power of concealing their falsehood. And during that time
they were gods, real live dwellers on Olympus, flaming Joves to poor
mortal Semeles. Liosha quite understood.

I en