And the exceeding bitterness of her self-reproach, which alone saved her composure, forbidding the mockery of tears, was only exaggerated when she remembered how vain her remorse must remain.  It mattered no jot that she was sorry, since death had sealed their estrangement ironically for all time.

In her passionate recognition of his constant justice and kindness, which of old, vainly striving to perpetuate the fading illusion of her husband’s honour (her generosity did not pause to remember how vain these efforts had been), she had discounted for hypocrisy, she felt that no price of personal suffering would have been too heavy if only for one hour, one moment, she could have recalled him from the world of shadows to her side.

She could figure to herself, refining on her misery, his attitude in such a case:  the half sad, half jesting reassurance of his gravely pardoning eyes.

They haunted her just then, those eyes of Philip Rainham, which had been to the last so ambiguous and so sad, and were now perpetually closed.

And for the first time a suspicion flashed across her mind, which, while it made her heart flutter like a frightened bird, seemed to her the one drop hitherto lacking in the cup of her unhappiness.  Had, then, after all, that gentle indifference of her friend masked an immense hunger, a deeply-felt need of personal tenderness, which she might have supplied—­ah, how gladly!—­if she had known?  Could he have cared more deeply than people knew?

She reminded herself the next moment, as they came to a sudden standstill before a dark-green door, how idle all such questions were—­vain beating of the hands against the shut door of death!

She alighted and dismissed her cab, and in the interval which elapsed before her ring was answered by a slovenly little servant, who gaped visibly at the lady’s hurried request that her name should be taken up to Mr. Oswyn, she had leisure for the first time to realize the strangeness of her course.

Her mother, Charles, her guests—­Felicia Dollond and the rest—­how would they consider the adventure if ever they should know?  It was easy to imagine their attitude of shocked disapproval, and her brother’s disgusted repudiation of the whole business as a thing, most emphatically, which one did not do.  Ah, no! it was not a departure such as this that a well-bred society Spartan could even decently contemplate!  And it was almost with a laugh, devoid, indeed, of merriment, that Eve tossed consideration of these scruples contemptuously away.

At last she was in revolt against their world and the pedantry of its little inflexible laws; and all her old traditions had become odious to her, seeming, for the moment, deeply tainted with dishonour, and partly the cause of her disastrous plight.  A great, ruining wave had broken over her life, and in her passionate helplessness she cried only for some firm and absolute shore, else the silence of the engulfing waters, not for the vain ropes of social convention with which they would drag her back into the perilous security from which she had been swept; and she had forgotten everything but her imperative need, which had brought her there, when the lodging-house drudge returned and ushered her clumsily into Oswyn’s presence.