And Anne, to whom the burden of life just then was more than ordinarily heavy, was fain to submit to the kindly tyranny.  Mrs. Errol had found her alone at the inn at Bramhurst on the night of the storm, and in response to her earnest request had taken her without delay straight back to her home.  Very little had passed between them on the circumstances that had resulted in this development.  Scarcely had Nap’s name been mentioned by either.  Mrs. Errol seemed to know him too well to need an explanation.  And Anne had noted this fact with a sick heart.

It meant to her the confirmation of what had already become a practical conviction, that the man she had once dreamed that she loved was no more than a myth of her own imagination.  Again and yet again she had been deceived, but her eyes were open at last finally and for all time.  No devil’s craft, however wily, however convincing, could ever close them again.

Lying in her darkened room, with her stretched nerves yet quivering at every sound, she told herself over and over that she knew Nap Errol now as others knew him, as he knew himself, a man cruel, merciless, unscrupulous, in whose dark soul no germ of love had ever stirred.

Why he had ever desired her she could not determine.  Possibly her very faith in him—­that faith that he had so rudely shattered—­had been the attraction; possibly only her aloofness, her pride, had kindled in him the determination to conquer.  But that he had ever loved her, as she interpreted love, she now told herself was an utter impossibility.  She even questioned in the bitterness of her disillusionment if Love, that True Romance to which she had offered sacrifice, were not also a myth, the piteous creation of a woman’s fond imagination, a thing non-existent save in the realms of fancy, a dream-goal to which no man might attain and very few aspire.

All through the long day she lay alone with her problem, perpetually turning it in her mind, perpetually asking by what tragic influence she had ever been brought to fancy that this man with his violent, unrestrained nature, his fierce egoism, his murderous impulses, had ever been worthy of the halo her love had fashioned for him.  No man was worthy!  No man was worthy!  This man least of all!  Had not he himself warned her over and over again, and she had not listened?  Perhaps he had not meant her to listen.  Perhaps it had only been another of his devilish artifices for ensnaring her, that attitude of humility, half-scoffing, half-persuasive, with which he had masked his inner vileness.

Oh, she was sick at heart that day, sick with disappointment, sick with humiliation, sick with a terrible foreboding that gave her no rest.  Slowly the hours dragged away.  She had despatched her urgent message to Lucas immediately upon her arrival at the Manor, and his prompt reply had in a measure reassured her.  But she knew that he was ill, and she could not drive from her mind the dread that he might fail her.