Then she let herself out quietly by the private door into the road.  And she stood still a moment, blotted against the shadows, hesitating, vaguely considering her next step.

The honey-coloured moon, casting its strange, silken glamour over the white house, over the black outline of the trees in the garden, spangled here and there with Japanese lanterns, gave an air of immense unreality to the scene; and the tremulous notes of the violins, which floated faintly down to her from the half-opened windows of the ball-room, only heightened this effect, seeming just then to be no more than the music of moonbeams to which the fairies dance.

For a moment a sudden weakness and timidity overcame her.  In a world so transcendently unreal—­had not she just seen her happiness become the very dream of a shadow?—­was it not the merest futility to take a step so definite, to be passionate or intense?  Better rather to rest for a little in this vague world of half-lights into which she had stepped, under the cooling stars, and then to return and take up one’s old place in the masque.

But her fantasy passed.  In the distance two glowing orbs of a hansom came slowly towards her, and her purpose grew suddenly very strong.

The man reined in his horse with an inquiring glance at the hooded figure on the pavement, seeking a fare.  And it was without hesitation that she engaged him, giving him the number of Oswyn’s house in Frith Street, Soho, in her calm, well-bred voice, and bidding him be quick.

But the horse was incapable—­tired, perhaps (she recalled the fact long afterwards, and the very shape and colour of the bony, ill-groomed animal, as one remembers trivial details upon occasions of great import); and after a while she resigned herself to a tedious drive.

As they rattled along confusedly through the crowded streets she caught from time to time the reflection of her own face in the two little mirrors at each side, and wondered to find herself the same.  For she did not deceive herself, nor undervalue the crushing force of the blow which she had received.

To her husband, when she turned scornfully from his clumsy evasions—­for a moment, perhaps, to herself—­she had justified the singular course she was taking by an overwhelming necessity of immediately facing the truth, in which, perhaps, there still lurked the dim possibility of explanation whereby her husband’s vileness might find the shadow of an excuse.

But with further reflection—­and she was reflecting with passionate intensity—­this little glow-worm of hope expired.  The truth!  She knew it already—­had known before, almost instinctively—­that Philip Rainham’s justification could only be the warrant of her husband’s guilt; no corroboration of Oswyn’s could make that dreary fact any plainer than it was already.

No, it was hardly the truth which she desired so much as an act of tardy expiation which she would make.  For with the bitterness of her conviction that, for all her wealth, and her beauty, and her youth, she had, none the less, irretrievably thrown away her life, there mingled an immense contrition at having been so blind and hard, so culpably unjust to the most generous of men, who had deliberately effaced himself for her good.