l slowly and watching her intensely with his shining eyes another
fear came to her. She imagined herself gone and the creature sitting on
the brink, its head thrown up to the sky and howling for hours. This
thought was not to be borne. Then my shout reached her ears.

She told me all this with simplicity. My voice had destroyed her
poise--the suicide poise of her mind. Every act of ours, the most
criminal, the most mad presupposes a balance of thought, feeling and
will, like a correct attitude for an effective stroke in a game. And I
had destroyed it. She was no longer in proper form for the act. She was
not very much annoyed. Next day would do. She would have to slip away
without attracting the notice of the dog. She thought of the necessity
almost tenderly. She came down the path carrying her despair with lucid
calmness. But when she saw herself deserted by the dog, she had an
impulse to turn round, go up again and be done with it. Not even that
animal cared for her--in the end.

"I really did think that he was attached to me. What did he want to
pretend for, like this? I thought nothing could hurt me any more. Oh
yes. I would have gone up, but I felt suddenly so tired. So tired. And
then you were there. I didn't know what you would do. You might have
tried to follow me and I didn't think I could run--not up hill--not
then."

She had raised her white face a little, and it was queer to hear her say
these things. At that time of the morning there are comparatively few
people out in that part of the town. The broad interminable perspective
of the East India Dock Road, the great perspective of drab brick walls,
of grey pavement, of muddy roadway rumbling dismally with loaded carts
and vans lost itself in the distance, imposing and shabby in its spacious
meanness of aspect, in its immeasurable poverty of forms, of colouring,
of life--under a harsh, unconcerned sky dried by the wind to a clear
blue. It had been raining during the night. The sunshine itself seemed
poor. From time to time a few bits of paper, a little dust and straw
whirled past us on the broad flat promontory of the pavement before the
rounded front of the hotel.

Flora de Barral was silent for a while. I said:

"And next day you thought better of it."

Again she raised her eyes to mine with that peculiar expression of
informed innocence; and again her white cheeks took on the faintest tinge
of pink--the merest shadow of a b