before which she stood bitterly amazed at her former stupidity.  And in the events of yesterday, which she pitilessly reviewed, she beheld a deliberate and prearranged plan for her betrayal.  Had he not telephoned to Boston for the rooms, rehearsed in his own mind every detail of what had subsequently happened?  Was there any essential difference between the methods of Ditmar and Duval?  Both were skilled in the same art, and Ditmar was the cleverer of the two.  It had only needed her meeting with Lise, in that house, to reveal how he had betrayed her faith and her love, sullied and besmirched them.  And then came the odd reflection,—­how strange that that same Sunday had been so fateful for herself and Lise!

The agony of these thoughts was mitigated by the scorching hatred that had replaced her love, the desire for retaliation, revenge.  Occasionally, however, that stream of consciousness was broken by the recollection of what she had permitted and even advised her sister to do; and though the idea of the place to which Lise was going sickened her, though she achieved a certain objective amazement at the transformation in herself enabling her to endorse such a course, she was glad of having endorsed it, she rejoiced that Lise’s child would not be born into a world that had seemed—­so falsely—­fair and sweet, and in reality was black and detestable.  Her acceptance of the act—­for Lise—­was a function of the hatred consuming her, a hatred which, growing in bigness, had made Ditmar merely the personification of that world.  From time to time her hands clenched, her brow furrowed, powerful waves of heat ran through her, the craving for action became so intense she could scarcely refrain from rising in her seat.

By some odd whim of the weather the wind had backed around into the east, gathering the clouds once more.  The brilliancy of the morning had given place to greyness, the high slits of windows seemed dirtier than ever as the train pulled into the station at Hampton, shrouded in Gothic gloom.  As she left the car Janet was aware of the presence on the platform of an unusual number of people; she wondered vaguely, as she pushed her way through them, why they were there, what they were talking about?  One determination possessed her, to go to the Chippering Mill, to Ditmar.  Emerging from the street, she began to walk rapidly, the change from inaction to exercise bringing a certain relief, starting the working of her mind, arousing in her a realization of the necessity of being prepared for the meeting.  Therefore, instead of turning at Faber Street, she crossed it.  But at the corner of the Common she halted, her glance drawn by a dark mass of people filling the end of Hawthorne Street, where it was blocked by the brick-coloured facade of the Clarendon Mill.  In the middle distance men and boys were running to join this crowd.  A girl, evidently an Irish-American mill hand of the higher paid sort, hurried toward her from the direction of the mill itself.  Janet accosted her.