pt to fetch her back, but would
simply draw a line through his remembrance of her, rub her out of his
mind, (his heart, she knew, would need no rubbing, because she had
never been in it,) and after the first fury was over, fury solely on
account of the scandal, he would be as he had been before, while
she--oh wonderful new life!--she would be born again to all the
charities.

Now how can I, weak vessel whose only ballast is a cargo of
interrogations past which life swirls with a thunder of derisively
contradictory replies, pretend to say whether Priscilla ought to have
had conscience-qualms or not? Am I not deafened by the roar of
answers, all seemingly so right yet all so different, that the
simplest question brings? And would not the answering roar to anything
so complicated as a question about conscience-qualms deafen me for
ever? I shall leave the Princess, then, to run away from her home and
her parent if she chooses, and make no effort to whitewash any part of
her conduct that may seem black. I shall chronicle, and not comment. I
shall try to, that is, for comments are very dear to me. Indeed I see
I cannot move on even now till I have pointed out that though
Priscilla was getting as far as she could from the Grand Duke she was
also getting as near as she could to the possession of her soul; and
there are many persons who believe this to be a thing so precious that
it is absolutely the one thing worth living for.

The crossing to Dover, then, was accomplished quite peacefully by
Priscilla. Not so, however, by Fritzing. He, tormented man, chief
target for the goddess's darts, spent his time holding on to the rail
along the turbine's side in order to steady himself; and as there was
a dead calm that day the reader will at once perceive that the tempest
must have been inside Fritzing himself. It was; and it had been raised
to hurricane pitch by some snatches of the talk of two Englishmen he
had heard as they paced up and down past where he was standing.

The first time they passed, one was saying to the other, "I never
heard of anything so infamous."

This ought not to have made Fritzing, a person of stainless life and
noble principles, start, but it did. He started; and he listened
anxiously for more.

"Yes," said the other, who had a newspaper under his arm, "they
deserve about as bad as they'll--"

He was out of ear-shot; but Fritzing mechanically finished the
sentence himself. Who had been infamous? And w