“From inside the bars, across the street?” Beth asked.

“Of course.  The boy came over with the keys.”

“How clumsy and uninteresting, even innocence of that sort can be!” Beth remarked.  “And Mrs. Wordling was so zealous for you to hear that she told you herself?”

“That is rather humorous, isn’t it?” the Grey One agreed.  “Of course she supposed I had heard, and wanted to be sure the truth came to me.  I think, too, she wanted me to know that Mr. Bedient had invited her to go to the shore for a few days—­later.  She asked if I thought she had better go——­”

“And you told her?” Beth managed to say.

“Just as you would, that she was an adult and must use her own judgment.”

“Exactly,” said Beth, and then a sentence got away from her, though she contrived to garb it in a laugh.  “He won’t go to the shore with Mrs. Wordling!...  Wait until I get my hat.”

* * * * *

In the little room alone, she saw that the long dark road must be traversed again; the chains had fallen upon her anew—­their former wounds yet unhealed....  The old lies and acting; the old hateful garment for the world to see; suffering beneath a smile.  She must hear the voice of Beth Truba lightly observing and answering, while she—­the heart of her—­was deathly ill.

Her throat tightened; it seemed her breast must burst with old and new agonies.  Once more she had given her full faith.  This was clear now.  She had been a weakling again, and tumultuously, in spite of an ugly warning!  Had she not called at Wordling’s apartment with the poster?  Had she not heard the whispers, the overturned chair and scornfully fathomed the delayed answering of the door?...  And to think she had almost succeeded in putting that rankling incident away, though he had not been in New York a month.  And the shame of it, the recent hours she had spent, with this visionary thing; that he was beyond mating with a woman of flesh—­beyond her best—­a forerunner with glad tidings for all women!...  Forerunner, indeed, and twice caught in a second-rate woman’s net of beguilings!  Twice caught, and how many times uncaught?...  And she had thought herself hard and sceptical in his presence.

The old romance looked clean and fair compared to this—­the old lover, boyish and forgivable.  He had not won by preaching....  Where was the Shadowy Sister now?

There was no quarter for Beth.  She was a modern product, a twentieth century woman, an angry, solitary, world-trained woman, who could not make a concession to imperfect manhood.  This was the key to all her agonies.  She had asked manhood of mind, and could not accept less.  The awful part was that she must do over again all the hateful strategies, all the concealing and worldliness—­her body, mind and soul sorely crippled from before.  That she must thus use her womanhood, her precious prime of strength.  One experience had not hardened her enough.  With what corrosion of self-hatred did she turn upon herself that moment!