“Dear, dear world!” She stretched out her hands to it in a childish greeting.

Then the joy died sharply from her eyes.  “How many years left—­to enjoy it in—­before one dies—­or one’s heart dies?”

Invariably, now, her moments of sensuous pleasure ended in this dread of something beyond—­of a sudden drowning of beauty and delight—­of a future unknown and cruel, coming to meet her, like some armed assassin in a narrow path.

William!  When it came could William save her?  “William is a darling!” she said to herself, her face full of yearning.

As for that other—­it gave her an intense pleasure to think of the flames creeping up the form and face of the photograph.  Should she hear, perhaps, in a week or two that he had been seized with some mysterious illness, like the witch-victims of old?  A shiver ran through her, a thrill of repentance—­till the bitter lines of the poem came back to memory—­lines describing a woman with neither the courage for sin nor the strength for virtue, a “light woman” indeed, whom the great passions passed eternally by, whom it was a humiliation to court and a mere weakness to regret.  Then she laughed, and began again with passionate zest upon the sheets before her.

A sound of approaching footsteps on the wood-path.  She half rose, smiling.

The branches parted, and Darrell appeared.  He paused to survey the oread vision of Lady Kitty.

“Am I not to the minute?” He held up his watch in front of her.

“So you got my note?”

“Certainly.  I was immensely flattered.”  He threw himself down on the moss beside her, his sallow, long-chinned face and dark eyes toned to a morning cheerfulness, his dress much fresher and more exact than usual.  “But he is one of the men who look so much better in their old clothes!” thought Kitty.

“Well, what can I do for you, Lady Kitty?” he resumed, smiling.

“I wanted your advice,” said Kitty—­not altogether sure, now that he was there beside her, that she did want it.

“About your literary work?”

She threw him a quick glance.

“Do you know?  How do you know?  I have been writing a book!”

“So I imagined—­”

“And—­and—­” She broke now into eagerness, bending forward, “I want you to help me get it published.  It is a deadly secret.  Nobody knows—­”

“Not even William?”

“No one,” she repeated.  “And I can’t tell you about it, or show you a line of it, unless you vow and swear to me—­”

“Oh!  I swear,” said Darrell, tranquilly—­“I swear.”

Kitty looked at him doubtfully a moment—­then resumed: 

“I have written it at all sorts of times—­when William was away—­in the middle of the night—­out in the woods. Nobody knows.  You see”—­her little fingers plucked at the moss—­“I have a good many advantages.  If people want ‘Society’ with a big S, I can give it them!”