e disdainful dart which pierces through
and through subterfuge and falsehood. That he should have ventured,
knowing what he knew, to approach her at all with the semblance of love:
that he should have dared,--oh, he knew, well he knew, how, once the
light of clear truth was let down upon it, his conduct would appear,--not
the mere trifler who had amused himself and meant no more, not the fool
of society, who made a woman think he loved her, and "behaved badly,"
and left her _plante la_. What were these contemptible images to the
truth! He shrank into himself as he pursued these thoughts and skulked
along. He felt like a man exposed and ashamed, a man whom true men would
avoid. "Put in every honest hand a whip,"--ah no, that was not wanted.
Chatty's eyes, dove's eyes, too gentle to wound, eyes that knew not how
to look unkindly, to conceal a sentiment, to veil a falsehood--one look
from Chatty's eyes would be enough.

Chatty knew nothing of the tragic terror which had come upon him at
the mere apprehension of this look of hers. She had no thought of any
tragedy, except that unknown to men which often becomes the central fact
in a life such as hers; the tragedy of an unfinished chapter in life,
the no-ending of an episode which had promised to be the drama in which
almost every human creature figures herself (or himself) as the chief
actor, one time or other. The drama indeed had existed, it had run
almost all its course, for the time it lasted it had been more absorbing
than anything else in the world. The greatest historical events beside
it had been but secondary. Big London, the greatest city in the world,
had served only as a little bosquet of evergreens in a village garden
might have done, as the background and scene for it. But it had no end;
the time of the action was accomplished, the curtain had fallen, and
the lights had been put out, but the comedy had come to no conclusion.
Comedy-tragedy; it does not matter much which words you use. The scenes
had all died away in incompleteness, and there had been no end. To many
a gentle life such as that of Chatty might be, this is all that ever
happens beyond the level of the ordinary and common. It was with a touch
of insight altogether beyond her usual intellectual capacity that she
realised this as she travelled very quietly with her mother from London
to Highcombe, not a very long way. Mrs. Warrender was very silent too.
She had meant the visit to town to be one of pl