She was almost afraid to move; she even held her breath.

Suddenly the echoes of the street were reawakened.  Drake roused himself and opened his eyes.  A small group of people strolled out of the market-place and stopped in front of the ‘Yellow Boar.’  There was interchange of farewells, a voice said encouragingly, ’Better luck next time,’ and one man entered the hotel.

In the room opposite a match flared up and Lady Cranston lit the gas.  She stood for a moment underneath the chandelier, in the full light, listening.  Then she walked quickly to the mirror above the mantelpiece and appeared to dry her eyes and cheeks with her handkerchief.  She turned to the door almost guiltily, just as it opened.  Lord Cranston advanced into the room, and his wife moved towards him.  The whole scene, every movement, every corner of the room was visible to Clarice like a scene on the stage of a theatre; it was visible also to Drake.

Clarice could note the disconsolate attitude of Lord Cranston, the smile of tenderness upon his wife’s face.  She saw Lady Cranston set her arms gently about his neck, and her lips move, and then a low hoarse cry burst from Drake at her side.

It sounded to her articulate with all the anguish and all the suffering of which she had ever heard.  There was a harsh note of irony in it too, which deepened its sadness.  It seemed almost an acknowledgment of defeat in the actual moment of victory—­a recognition that after all his opponent had really won.

The cry was a revelation to Clarice; it struck her like a blow, and she started under it, so that the rings of the curtain rattled upon the pole.

Drake bent sharply towards her; she caught a gleam of his eyes in the darkness.  Then with a catch of his breath he started back.  Clarice heard the click of a match-box, the scraping of a lucifer, and Drake held the lighted match above his head.

‘You!’ he said.

Clarice moved out from the curtain and confronted him.  She did not answer, and he did not speak again.  Clarice was in no doubt as to the meaning of his cry.  His eyes even in that unsteady light told it to her only too clearly.

And this was the man whom she had believed to stand in no need of a woman’s companionship.  The thought at the actual moment of its occurrence sent a strange thrill of disappointment through her; she had built up her pride in him so confidently upon this notion of his independence.  And having built up her pride, she had lived in it, using this very notion as her excuse and justification.  She ran no risk, she had felt.

‘Clarice!’

The name was shouted impatiently from the hall, and came to them quite audibly through the half-opened door.  But neither she nor Drake seemed to hear it.  They stood looking silently into each other’s eyes.

At last she began to speak, and as she spoke, her sense of disappointment diminished and died.  She became conscious again of the suffering which his cry had confessed.  The contrast between this one outburst and his ordinary self-control enforced its meaning upon her.  It seemed still to be ringing in her ears, stretched out to a continuous note, and her voice gradually took a tone as of one pleading for forgiveness.