No, the thing was true.  He was the man who had wrecked her life at its beginning, and now—­now he had wrecked it again.  He was the man whose hands were stained with her husband’s blood.  He had done the deed in one of those wild tempests of anger with which she was so familiar.  He had done the deed, possibly unintentionally, but certainly with murderous impulse; and then deliberately cynically, he had covered it up, and gone his arrogant way.

He had met her, he had desired her; with a few, quickly-stifled qualms he had won her, trusting to luck that his sin would never find him out.  And so he had made her his own, his property, his prisoner, the slave of his pleasure.  She was bound for ever to her husband’s murderer.

Again body and soul shrank in quivering horror from the thought, and a wild revolt awoke within her.  She could not bear it.  She must break free.  The bare memory of his passion sickened her.  For the first time in her life hatred, fiery, intense, kindled within her.  The thought of his touch filled her with a loathing unutterable.  He had become horrible to her, a thing unclean, abominable, whose very proximity was pollution.  She felt as if the blood on his hands had stained her also—­the blood of the man she had once loved.  For a space she became like a woman demented.  The thing was too abhorrent to be endured.

And then by slow degrees her brain began to clear again.  She grew a little calmer.  Monstrous though he was, he was still human.  He was, in a fashion, at her mercy.  He had sinned, but it was in her hands that his punishment lay.

She was stronger than he.  She had always known it.  But she must keep her strength.  She must not waste it in futile resentment.  She would need it all.  He had entered her kingdom by subtlety; but she would drive him forth in the strength of a righteous indignation.  To suffer him to remain was unthinkable.  It would be to share his guilt.

Her thoughts tried to wander into the future, but she called them resolutely back.  The future would provide for itself.  Her immediate duty was all she now needed to face.  When that dreaded interview was over, when she had shut him out finally and completely then it would be time enough to consider that.  Probably some arrangement would have to be made by which they would meet occasionally, but as husband and wife—­never, never more.

It was growing late.  The dinner-gong had sounded, but she would not go down.  She rang for Victor, and told him to bring her something on a tray.  It did not matter what.

He looked at her with keen little eyes of solicitude, and swiftly obeyed her desire.  He then asked her if the dinner were to be kept for Monsieur Pierre, who had not yet returned.  She did not know what to say, but lest he should wonder at her ignorance of Piers’ doings, she answered in the negative, and Victor withdrew.

Then, again lest comment should be made, she forced herself to eat and drink, though the food nauseated her.  A feeling of sick suspense was growing upon her, a strange, foreboding fear that hung leaden about her heart.  What was Piers doing all this time?  What effect had that message, delivered by Tudor, had upon him?  Why had he not returned?