Still kneeling by the flowers she glanced at the clock.  Ten-thirty!  Dick was already miles away on his hateful journey, had gone sad and hopeless because she loved Alan Massey.  Why did it have to be so?  Why was love so perverse and unreasonable a thing?  Alan was not worthy to touch Dick’s hand, though in his arrogance he affected to despise the other.  But it was Alan she loved, not Dick.  There must be something wrong with her, dreadfully wrong that it should be so.  After last night there could be no doubt of that.

She sat down on the floor, opened Alan’s letter, despised herself for letting its author’s spell creep over her anew with every word.  It was an abject plea for mercy, for forgiveness, for restoration to favor.  It had been a devil of jealousy that had possessed him, he had not known what he was doing.  Surely she must know that he would not willingly harm or hurt or anger her in any way.  He loved her too much.  Carson had behaved like a man.  Alan would apologize to him if the other man would accept the apology.  It was Tony really who had driven him mad by being so much kinder to the other than to himself.  She must realize what he was, not drive him too far.

“I am sending you roses,” he ended.  “Please don’t throw them away as you did the others.  Keep them and let them plead for me.  And don’t ah Tony, don’t ever, ever say again what you said last night, that you never wanted to see me again!  You don’t mean it, I know.  But don’t say it.  It kills me to hear you.  If you throw me over I’ll blow my brains out as sure as I am a living man this moment.  But you won’t, you cannot, Tony dearest.  You will forgive me, stand by me, rotten as I am.  You are mine.  You love me.  You won’t push me down to Hell.”

It was a cowardly letter Tony thought, a letter calculated to frighten her, bring her to subjection again as well as to gratify the writer’s own Byronic instinct for pose.  He had behaved badly.  He acknowledged it but claimed forgiveness on the grounds of love, his love for her which had been goaded to mad jealousy by her thoughtless unkindness, her love for him which would not desert him no matter what he did.

But pose or not, Tony was obliged to admit there was some truth in it all.  Perhaps it was all true-too true.  Even if he did not resort to the pistol as he threatened he would find other means of slaying his soul if not his body if she forsook him now.  She could not do it.  As he said she loved him too well.  She had gone too far in the path to turn back now.

Ah why, why had she let it go so far?  Why had she not listened to Dick, to Uncle Phil, to Carlotta, even to Miss Lottie?  They had all told her there was no happiness for her in loving Alan Massey.  She knew it herself better than any of them could possibly know it.  And yet she had to go on, for his sake, for her own because she loved him.

By this time she was no longer angry or resentful.  She was just sorry—­sorry for Alan—­sorry for herself.  She knew just as she had known all along that last night’s incident would not really make any difference.  It would be put away in time with all the other things she had to forgive.  She had eaten her pomegranate seeds.  She could not escape the dark kingdom.  She did not wish to.