“Honora, it was sacrilegious!”

Honora leaped to her feet again.

“Yes, yes,” she cried, “it was.  And now all has happened according to prophecy, and he’s gone with this woman!  He thinks she’s his mate, but, I—­I was his mate.  And I defrauded him.  So now he’s taken her because she was kind, because she loved him, because—­she was beautiful!”

“She looks like you.”

“Don’t I know it?  It’s my beauty that he’s gone away with—­the beauty I wouldn’t let him see.  Of course, he doesn’t realize it.  He only knows life cheated him, and now he’s trying to make up to himself for what he’s lost.”

“Oh, can you excuse him like that?”

The daylight was hardening, and it threw Honora’s drawn face into repellent relief.

“I don’t excuse him at all!” she said.  “I condemn him!  I condemn him!  With all his intellect, to be such a fool!  And to be so cruel—­so hideously cruel!”

But she checked herself sharply.  She looked around her with eyes that seemed to take in things visible and invisible—­all that had been enacted in that curious room, all the paraphernalia, all the significance of those uncompleted, important experiments.  Then suddenly her face paled and yet burned with light.

“But I know a great revenge,” she said.  “I know a revenge that will break his heart!”

“Don’t say things like that,” begged Kate.  “I don’t recognize you when you’re like that.”

“When you hear what the revenge is, you will,” said Honora proudly.

“We’re going now,” Kate told her with maternal decision.  “Here’s your coat.”

“Home?” She began trembling again and the haunted look crept back into her eyes.

Kate paid no heed.  She marched Honora swiftly along the awakened streets and into the bereaved house, past the desecrated chamber where David’s bed stood beside his wife’s, up to Kate’s quiet chamber.  Honora stretched herself out with an almost moribund gesture.  Then the weight of her sorrow covered her like a blanket.  She slept the strange deep sleep of those who dare not face the waking truth.

XVII

Kate, who was facing it, telegraphed to Karl Wander.  It was all she could think of to do.

“Can you come?” she asked.  “David Fulham has gone away with Mary Morrison.  Honora needs you.  You are the cousin of both women.  Thought I had better turn to you.”  She was brutally frank, but it never occurred to her to mince matters there.  However, where the public was concerned, her policy was one of secrecy.  She called, for example, on the President of the University, who already knew the whole story.

“Can’t we keep it from being blazoned abroad?” she appealed to him.  “Mrs. Fulham will suffer more if he has to undergo public shame than she possibly could suffer from her own desertion.  She’s tragically angry, but that wouldn’t keep her from wanting to protect him.  We must try to prevent public exposure.  It will save her the worst of torments.”  She brooded sadly over the idea, her aspect broken and pathetic.