She recalled every strange element in the incident of Ella’s appearance in the drawing room:  the way in which Ella had kissed her and clung to her as a child might have done on finding someone to protect it; she recalled the wild words which Ella had uttered, and, finally, the terrible expression which had appeared on her face as she whispered that reckless answer to Phyllis’ question, when she had picked up her wrap and flung it around her just before the sound of footsteps had come to their ears.  All that she recalled in connection with that extraordinary visit of Ella’s was quite intelligible to her; but the mystery of all was more than neutralized by her recollection of the way Ella had thrown herself into her husband’s arms.  That action should, she felt, be regarded as the one important factor, as it were, in the solution of the problem of Ella’s mood—­Ella’s series of moods.  Nothing else that she had done, nothing that she had said, was worthy of being taken account of, alongside that dominant act of the true wife.

The little whisper which suggested to her that there was a good deal that was mysterious in the incident of her friend’s visit she refused to regard as rendering it less obligatory on her—­Phyllis—­to pray that she might be forgiven that horrid suspicion which, for an instant, had come to her; and so she fell asleep praying to God to forgive her for her sin (in thought) against her friend.

And while Phyllis was praying her prayer, her friend, the True Wife, was praying with her face down upon her pillow, and her bare arms stretched out over the white lace of the bed: 

“Forgive me, O God; forgive me! and keep him away from me—­forever and ever and ever.  Amen.”

And while both these prayers were being prayed, Herbert Courtland was sitting on one of the deck stools of the yacht Water Nymph, looking back at the many lights that gleamed in clusters along the southern coast of England, now far astern; for a light breeze was sending the boat along with a creaming, quivering wake.  In the bows a youth was making the night hideous through the agency of a banjo and a sham negro melody.  Amidships, Lord Earlscourt and two other men were playing, by the light of a lantern slung from the backstay, a game called poker; Lord Earlscourt, at every fresh deal, trying to make the rest understand how greatly the worry of being held responsible, as the patron of the living of St. Chad’s, for the eccentricities of his rector, had affected his nerves—­a matter upon which his friends assured him, with varied degrees of emphasis, they were in no way interested.

Within a few feet of these congenial shipmates Herbert Courtland sat looking across the shining ripples to the shining lights of the coast; wondering how he came to be on the sea instead of on the shore.  Was this indeed the night over which his imagination had gloated for months?  Was it indeed possible that this was the very night following the day—­Thursday—­for which he had engaged himself in accordance with the letter that he still carried in his pocket?