’Percy, if you suspect that I have uttered one word before last night, you are wrong.  I cannot paint my temptation or my loss of sense last night.  Previously I was blameless.  I thirsted, yes; but in the hope of helping you.’

He looked at her.  She perceived how glitteringly loveless his eyes had grown.  It was her punishment; and though the enamoured woman’s heart protested it excessive, she accepted it.

‘I can never trust you again,’ he said.

‘I fear you will not,’ she replied.

His coming back to her after the departure of the guests last night shone on him in splendid colours of single-minded loverlike devotion.  ’I came to speak to my own heart.  I thought it would give you pleasure; thought I could trust you utterly.  I had not the slightest conception I was imperilling my honour . . . !’

He stopped.  Her bloodless fixed features revealed an intensity of anguish that checked him.  Only her mouth, a little open for the sharp breath, appeared dumbly beseeching.  Her large eyes met his like steel to steel, as of one who would die fronting the weapon.

He strangled a loathsome inclination to admire.

‘So good bye,’ he said.

She moved her lips.

He said no more.  In half a minute he was gone.

To her it was the plucking of life out of her breast.

She pressed her hands where heart had been.  The pallor and cold of death took her body.

CHAPTER XXXV

Reveals how the true heroine of romance comes finally to her, time of
triumph

The shutting of her house-door closed for Dacier that woman’s history in connection with himself.  He set his mind on the consequences of the act of folly—­the trusting a secret to a woman.  All were possibly not so bad:  none should be trusted.

The air of the street fanned him agreeably as he revolved the horrible project of confession to the man who had put faith in him.  Particulars might be asked.  She would be unnamed, but an imagination of the effect of naming her placarded a notorious woman in fresh paint:  two members of the same family her victims!

And last night, no later than last night, he had swung round at this very corner of the street to give her the fullest proof of his affection.  He beheld a dupe trotting into a carefully-laid pitfall.  She had him by the generosity of his confidence in her.  Moreover, the recollection of her recent feeble phrasing, when she stood convicted of the treachery, when a really clever woman would have developed her resources, led him to doubt her being so finely gifted.  She was just clever enough to hoodwink.  He attributed the dupery to a trick of imposing the idea of her virtue upon men.  Attracted by her good looks and sparkle, they entered the circle of her charm, became delightfully