The riot of the air was not cold; there was still a recollection of summer in the gusts that beat on Kitty’s fair hair and wrestled with her cloak.  As she clung to the balcony she pictured to herself the tumbling waves on the Lido; the piled storm-clouds parting like a curtain above a dead Venice; and behind, the gleaming eternal Alps, sending their challenge to the sea—­the forces that make the land, to the forces that engulf it.

Her wild fancy went out to meet the tumult of blast and wave.  She felt herself, as it were, anchored a moment at sea, in the midst of a war of elements, physical and moral.

Yes, yes!—­it was Geoffrey.  Once, under the skipping light, she had seen the face distinctly.  Paler than of old—­gaunt, unhappy, absent.  It was the face of one who had suffered—­in body and mind.  But—­she trembled through all her slight frame!—­the old harsh power was there unchanged.

Had he seen and recognized her—­slipping away afterwards into the mouth of a side canal, or dropping behind in the darkness?  Was he ashamed to face her—­or angered by the reminder of her existence?  No doubt it seemed to him now a monstrous absurdity that he should ever have said he loved her!  He despised her—­thought her a base and coward soul.  Very likely he would make it up with Mary Lyster now, accept her nursing and her money.

Her lip curled in scorn.  No, that she didn’t believe!  Well, then, what would be his future?  His name had been but little in the newspapers during the preceding year; the big public seemed to have forgotten him.  A cloud had hung for months over the struggle of races and of faiths now passing in the Balkans.  Obscure fighting in obscure mountains; massacre here, revolt there; and for some months now hardly an accredited voice from Turk or Christian to tell the world what was going on.

But Geoffrey had now emerged—­and at a moment when Europe was beginning perforce to take notice of what she had so far wilfully ignored. A lui la parole! No doubt he was preparing it, the bloody, exciting story which would bring him before the foot-lights again, and make him once more the lion of a day.  More social flatteries, more doubtful love-affairs!  Fools like herself would feel his spell, would cherish and caress him, only to be stung and scathed as she had been.  The bitter lines of his “portrait” rung in her ears—­blackening and discrowning her in her own eyes.

She abhorred him!—­but the thought that he was in Venice burned deep into senses and imagination.  Should she tell William she had seen him?  No, no!  She would stand by herself, protect herself!

So she stole back to bed, and lay there wakeful, starting guiltily at William’s every movement.  If he knew what had happened!—­what she was thinking of!  Why on earth should he?  It would be monstrous to harass him on his holiday—­with all these political affairs on his mind.

Then suddenly—­by an association of ideas—­she sat up shivering, her hands pressed to her breast.  The telegram—­the book!  Oh, but of course she had been in time!—­of course!  Why, she had offered the man two hundred pounds!  She lay down laughing at herself—­forcing herself to try and sleep.