Was it because of that short conversation with William in the afternoon?—­because of the calmness with which he had taken that word “separation,” which she had thrown at him merely as a child boasts and threatens, never expecting for one moment to be taken at its word?  She had proposed it to him before, after the night at Hamel Weir; she had been serious then, it had been an impulse of remorse, and he had laughed at her.  But at Haggart it had been an impulse of temper, and he had taken it seriously.  How the wound had rankled, all the afternoon, while she was chattering to the Royalties!  And as she jumped on the pedestal, and saw his face of horror, there was the typical womanish triumph that she had made him feel—­would make him feel yet more.

How good, how tender he had been to her in her illness!  And yet—­yet?

“He cares for politics, for his plans—­not for me.  He will never trust me again—­as he did once.  He’ll never ask me to help him—­he’ll find ways not to—­though he’ll be very sweet to me all the time.”

And the thought of her nullity with him in the future, her insignificance in his life, tortured her.

Why had she treated Lord Parham so?  “I can be a lady when I choose,” she said, mockingly, to herself.  “I wasn’t even a lady.”

Then suddenly there flashed on her memory a little picture of Lord Parham, standing spectacled and bewildered, peering into her slip of paper.  She bent her head on her hands and laughed, a stifled, hysterical laugh, which scandalized the woman kneeling beside her.

But the laugh was soon quenched again in restless pain.  William’s affection had been her only refuge in those weeks of moral and physical misery she had just passed through.

“But it’s only because he’s so terribly sorry for me.  It’s all quite different.  And I can’t ever make him love me again in the old way....  It wasn’t my fault.  It’s something born in me—­that catches me by the throat.”

And she had the actual physical sense of some one strangled by a possessing force.

“Dolce Sacramento!  Santo Sacramento!"...  The music swayed and echoed through the church.  Kitty uncovered her eyes and felt a sudden exhilaration in the blaze of light.  It reminded her of the bending Christ in the picture of San Giorgio.  Awe and beauty flowed in upon her, in spite of the poor music and the tawdry church.  What if she tried religion?—­recalled what she had been taught in the convent?—­gave herself up to a director?

She shivered and recoiled.  How would she ever maintain her faith against William—­William, who knew so much more than she?

Then, into the emptiness of her heart there stole the inevitable temptations of memory.  Where was Geoffrey?  She knew well that he was a violent and selfish man; but he understood much in her that William would never understand.  With a morbid eagerness she recalled the play of feeling between them, before that mad evening at Hamel Weir.  What perpetual excitement—­no time to think—­or regret!