Nataly sent a line to Victor:  ’Dearest, I go to bed early, am tired.  Dine well.  Come to me in the morning.’

She reproached herself for coldness to poor Skepsey, when he had gone.  The prospect of her being alone until the morning had been so absorbing a relief.

She found a relief also in work at the book of the trains.  A walk to the telegraph-station strengthened her.  Especially after despatching a telegram to Mr. Dudley Sowerby at Cronidge, and one to Nesta at Moorsedge, did she become stoutly nerved.  The former was requested to meet her at Penhurst station at noon.  Nesta was to be at the station for the Wells at three o’clock.

From the time of the flying of these telegrams, up to the tap of Victor’s knuckle on her bed-room door next morning, she was not more reflectively conscious than a packet travelling to its destination by pneumatic tube.  Nor was she acutely impressionable to the features and the voice she loved.

‘You know of Skepsey?’ she said.

‘Ah, poor Skepsey!’ Victor frowned and heaved.

‘One of us ought to stand beside him at the funeral.’

‘Colney or Fenellan?’

‘I will ask Mr. Durance.’

‘Do, my darling.’

‘Victor, you did not tell me of Dartrey’s wife.’

’There again!  They all get released!  Yes, Dartrey!  Dartrey has his luck too.’

She closed her eyes, with the desire to be asleep.

‘You should have told me, dear.’

’Well, my love!  Well—­poor Dartrey!  I fancy I hadn’t a confirmation of the news.  I remember a horrible fit of envy on hearing the hint:  not much more than a hint:  serious illness, was it?—­or expected event.  Hardly worth while to trouble my dear soul, till certain.  Anything about wives, forces me to think of myself—­my better self!’

‘I had to hear of it first from Mrs. Blathenoy.’

’You’ve heard of duels in dark rooms:—­that was the case between Blathenoy and me last night for an hour.’

She feigned somnolent fatigue over her feverish weariness of heart.  He kissed her on the forehead.

Her spell-bound intention to speak of Dudley Sowerby to him, was broken by the sounding of the hall-door, thirty minutes later.  She had lain in a trance.

Life surged to her with the thought, that she could decide and take her step.  Many were the years back since she had taken a step; less independently then than now; unregretted, if fatal.  Her brain was heated for the larger view of things and the swifter summing of them.  It could put the man at a remove from her and say, that she had lived with him and suffered intensely.  It gathered him to her breast rejoicing in their union:  the sharper the scourge, the keener the exultation.  But she had one reproach to deafen and beat down.  This did not come on her from the world:  she and the world were too much foot to foot on the antagonist’s line,