, affrighted by her strange look--"oh, sister!"

"I have seen heaven," Clorinda said; "I have stood on the threshold and
seen through the part-opened gate--and then have been dragged back to
hell."

Anne clung to her, gazing upwards at her eyes, in sheer despair.

"But back to hell I will not go," she went on saying. "Had I not seen
Heaven, they might perhaps have dragged me; but now I will not go--I will
not, that I swear! There is a thing which cannot be endured. Bear it no
woman should. Even I, who was not born a woman, but a wolf's she-cub, I
cannot. 'Twas not I, 'twas Fate," she said--"'twas not I, 'twas
Fate--'twas the great wheel we are bound to, which goes round and round
that we may be broken on it. 'Twas not I who bound myself there; and I
will not be broken so."

She said the words through her clenched teeth, and with all the mad
passion of her most lawless years; even at Anne she looked almost in the
old ungentle fashion, as though half scorning all weaker than herself,
and having small patience with them.

"There will be a way," she said--"there will be a way. I shall not swoon
again."

She left her divan and stood upright, the colour having come back to her
face; but the look Anne worshipped not having returned with it, 'twas as
though Mistress Clorinda Wildairs had been born again.

"To-morrow morning I go forth on Devil," she said; "and I shall be abroad
if any visitors come."

What passed in her chamber that night no human being knew. Anne, who
left her own apartment and crept into a chamber near hers to lie and
watch, knew that she paced to and fro, but heard no other sound, and
dared not intrude upon her.

When she came forth in the morning she wore the high look she had been
wont to wear in the years gone by, when she ruled in her father's house,
and rode to the hunt with a following of gay middle-aged and elderly
rioters. Her eye was brilliant, and her colour matched it. She held her
head with the old dauntless carriage, and there was that in her voice
before which her women quaked, and her lacqueys hurried to do her
bidding.

Devil himself felt this same thing in the touch of her hand upon his
bridle when she mounted him at the door, and seemed to glance askance at
her sideways.

She took no servant with her, and did not ride to the Park, but to the
country. Once on the highroad, she rode fast and hard, only galloping
straight before her as the way led, and having no intent