A flood of light filled Mildred’s eyes as she rose and confronted him.

“I say, Arthur, that you are a very noble gentleman, and, that though from this day I must be a miserable woman, I shall always be proud to have loved you.  Listen, my dear.  When I read that letter, I felt that your Angela towered over me like the Alps, her snowy purity stained only by the reflected lights of heaven.  I felt that I could not compete with such a woman as this, that I could never hope to hold you from one so calmly faithful, so dreadfully serene, and I knew that she had conquered, robbing me for Time, and, as I fear, leaving me beggared for Eternity.  In the magnificence of her undying power, in the calm certainty of her command, she flings me your life as though it were nothing.  ‘Take it,’ she says; ’he will never love you—­he is mine; but I can afford to wait.  I shall claim him before the throne of God.’  But now, look you, Arthur, if you can behave like the generous-hearted gentleman you are, I will show you that I am not behind you in generosity.  I will not marry you.  I have done with you; or, to be more correct,” and she gave a hard little laugh, “you have done with me.  Go back to Angela, the beautiful woman with inscrutable grey eyes, who waits for you, clothed in her eternal calm, like a mountain in its snows.  I shall send her that tiara as a wedding-present; it will become her well.  Go back, Arthur; but sometimes, when you are cloyed with unearthly virtue and perfection, remember that a woman loved you.  There, I have made you quite a speech; you will always think of me in connection with fine words.  Why don’t you go?”

Arthur stood utterly confused.

“And what will you do, Mildred?”

“I!” she answered, with the same hard laugh.  “Oh, don’t trouble yourself about me.  I shall be a happy woman yet.  I mean to see life now—­go in for pleasure, power, ritualism, whatever comes first.  Perhaps, when we meet again, I shall be Lady Minster, or some other great lady, and shall be able to tell you that I am very, very happy.  A woman always likes to tell her old lover that, you know, though she would not like him to believe it.  Perhaps, too”—­and here her eyes grew soft, and her voice broke into a sob—­“I shall have a consolation you know nothing of.”

He did not know what she meant; indeed, he was half-distracted with grief and doubt.

For a moment more they stood facing each other in silence, and then suddenly she flung her arms above her head, and uttering a low cry of grief, turned, and ran swiftly down the stone passage into the museum.  Arthur hesitated for a while, and then followed her.

A painful sight awaited him in that silent chamber; for there—­ stretched on the ground before the statue of Osiris, like some hopeless sinner before an inexorable justice, with her brown hair touched to gold by a ray of sunlight from the roof—­lay Mildred, as still as though she were dead.  He went to her, and tried to raise her, but she wrenched herself loose, and, in an abandonment of misery, flung herself upon the ground again.