Would he come up that evening, she wondered.  Two weeks now had passed since he had been to her thus, and so her mind—­searching, as it would seem, for its trouble—­intuitively connected the circumstance with this event of the settlement.  So she drove herself to judge him by the lowest standards—­those standards to which a woman at last resorts when she thinks she sees the waning of her influence.  That in the heart of them they seldom put first, but last.  Yet in the ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it is, in a man, the soonest to come and the soonest to go, while fondness, caring and affection may remain behind, untouched by its departure.  The beast in the every man has little to do with the intellect, and it is with his intellect, above all things, that he loves truest and most of all.

But here Sally fell into that most common of women’s mistakes.  She judged him by his passions.  If she did not hear his footsteps on the stairs that night; if his knock did not fall upon the door and startle the silence in her heart into a thousand pulsating echoes, then she knew that she would be one step nearer to the realization that it was the end indeed.

She looked again at the clock and then, with sudden decision, went into the other room and began to undress.  From a drawer in the Chippendale chest which he had bought her, she brought forth a new nightdress, in-let with dainty openwork, which a few days before she had purchased.  This she put on.  Then she went to the mirror, scrutinizing herself in its polished reflection.  Her hair was untidy.  She took it all down and put it up afresh, curling the long strands around her fingers as he had often said he had loved to see them.  When that was finished, she sprayed herself with scent—­on her hair, her arms, her breast, turning the spray, before it spluttered into silence, in the direction of the pillow upon which she slept.  Finally, she knelt down by her bedside and prayed—­

“Oh God—­let him love me—­always—­always; show me how I can keep him to love me—­always—­always.”

So she prayed for a way, having already chosen it, as once before she had prayed for guidance, well knowing what course she was about to adopt.  So most of us pray that we may know those things on which we have decided knowledge already.  It helps us in the throwing of blame on to the shoulders of God.  It consoles us—­the deed being done—­when we think that—­at least—­we prayed.

When she rose to her feet, she stood listening—­listening intently.  Then she moved to her bedroom door and opened it.  She could hear him still moving in his room below; but now it was in the room beneath hers—­beneath her bedroom.  He was going to bed.  She crept to the top of the stairs.  Every sound she could hear there, the dropping of his boots on the floor, the opening and shutting of his cupboard doors as he put his clothes away.  Then, last of all, the creaking of the springs of his bed as he got into it and moved to right and left, seeking the comfortable groove.