naged to engage
a cabin to herself. But she could not even attempt to rest in that
turmoil of noise and excitement. She went ashore again, and repaired to
a hotel for a meal. She took a private room, and lay down; but sleep
would not come to her, and presently, urged by that gnawing
restlessness, she was pacing up and down, up and down, like a wild
creature newly caged.

Sometimes she paused at the window to stare down into the busy
thoroughfare below, but she never paused for long. The fever that
consumed her gave her no rest, and again she was pacing to and fro, to
and fro, eternally, counting the leaden minutes that crept by so slowly.

At last, when flesh and blood could endure no longer, she snatched up
her hat and veil, and prepared to go on board. Standing before a mirror,
she began to adjust these with trembling fingers, but suddenly stopped
dead, gazing speechlessly before her. For her own eyes had inadvertently
met the eyes of the haggard woman in the glass, and dumbly, with a new
horror clutching at her heart, she stared into their wild depths and
read as in a book the tale of torture that they held.

When she turned away at length, she was shivering from head to foot as
though she had seen a spectre; and so in truth she had. For those eyes
had told her what she had not otherwise begun to realise.

That which she had believed dead for so long had been, only dormant, and
had sprung to sudden, burning life. The weapon with which she had
thought to pierce her enemy had turned in her grasp and pierced her
also, pierced her with an agony unspeakable--ay, pierced her to the
heart.

X

As one in a dream she stood on deck and watched India slipping below the
horizon. Her restlessness was subsiding at last. She was conscious of an
intense weariness, greater than any she had ever known. As soon as that
distant line of land had disappeared she told herself that she would go
and rest. Her fellow passengers had for the most part settled down. They
sat about in groups under the awning. A few, like herself, stood at the
rail and gazed astern, but there was no one very near her. She felt as
if she stood utterly alone in all the world.

Slowly at last she turned away. Slowly she crossed the deck and began to
descend the companion. A knot of people stood talking at the foot. They
made way for her to pass. She went through them without a glance. She
scarcely even saw them.

She went to her cabin and lay down, but sh