The balcony outside Katherine’s room baked in the morning sun. A tiny patch of sunshine stood on the threshold of the open window like a hesitating guest. A cool breeze entered the room, fluttering the gay ribbons of a tambourine hanging against the wall.

Hockmaster had gone. She did not know whether it was the relief of his absence or the rush of air caused by the opening of the door that sent a fierce momentary thrill through her frame. Her eyes were burning, her throat parched, her body quivering in a passion of anger. She stood for a few seconds, with parted lips, breathing great draughts of the cool air, and mechanically unloosened the neck of her dress; it was strangling her. Then she turned, looking from right to left, like a caged creature panting for escape. Her glance fell upon the chair where Hockmaster had just sat. The edge of the rug at the feet was curled, the cushion flattened, the tidy disarranged—all hatefully suggestive of his continued presence. With a passionate movement, she rushed and restored the things to order, shaking the cushion with childish fierceness, till not a wrinkle was left. While the action lasted, it relieved her.

She crossed the room, sat for a moment. But every pulse in her throbbed. Motionlessness was impossible. She sprang to her feet and paced the room, moving her arms in passionate gestures.

Forgive him! Never—never in this world or the next. To have betrayed her—to Raine of all men. The thought in its fiery agony was almost unthinkable. The drawling, plaintive tone in which he had made his confession maddened her. The echo of his words pierced her brain.

The sudden meeting the night before had shaken her. After the ordeal of the dinner her nerves had given way, and she had lain awake all night with throbbing temples. She had risen, faint and ill, to read his note beseeching an interview. She had strung herself to go through with it. As the hours passed she had grown more self-possessed; while waiting, had put some extra tidying touches to her room, rearranged some flowers she had bought the day before. She had even smiled to herself. After all, what claim had this man upon her?

He had come, trim, point-device in his attire, looking scarcely a day older than when she had forsaken all for him. He had pleaded, owned himself a scoundrel, strengthening his cause by his very weakness.

“I was going to marry you, Kitty. Before God I was! On my return from Mexico. I thought I was going to make millions—become one of the little gods of the earth. No man living would have let go the chance. I guess I was to have made you more powerful than the ordinary run of queens. Who could have told those mines were a fraud? Van Hoetmann himself was deceived. I came back at once. You were gone. I tried to trace you. I lost you. And all these years I have been kind of haunted by it. Before I left Chicago, a man was bragging he had never brought a cloud upon a woman’s life. I said to him: ‘Sir, go down on your bended knees and thank Almighty God for it.’”

She had listened, at first rather sceptically. But gradually his earnestness had convinced her of his sincerity. She had loved him, as she had understood love in those far-off days, when her young shadowed nature had expanded like a plant to the light. A little tenderness remained, called from forgotten depths to the surface. She had spoken very gently to him, forgiven him, the sweeter woman prompting her.

And then he had urged marriage.

“It is what I have come to tell you, Kitty. Let me make amends for the past by devoting my life to your happiness. I am not right bad all through. I’ll begin again to love you as I did when first I saw you in that white dress, among the roses of the verandah.”

She had smiled, shaken her head, it could never be. She was quite happy. He had done his part, she was satisfied with his intentions. But the amends she claimed was that he should never seek to see her again. Only on that condition, that he left Geneva at once, looking upon this as a final parting, could she give him her full, unqualified forgiveness. He had insisted, wearying her. She had risen, held out her hand to him.

“You must go. It is a generous impulse that urges you to make reparation in this manner, not love—”

She paused for a breath, instinctively trying him with a touchstone, and smiling as it failed to draw the response of passion.

“Let your conscience be easy. You wish to serve me—you have a trust—my honour—you can cherish it.”

And then the element of grotesque folly, that underlay this man’s nature, had prompted him to satisfy the childlike craving for plenary shrift and absolution. He told her that he had confessed in an unguarded moment to Chetwynd, taken him further into his confidence. At first she had scarcely understood him—the suggestion had stunned, paralyzed her for a few seconds, during which his words seemed to strike her senses dimly, like rain in the night. The complete realization came with a rush—the shame, the degradation—the abyss that he had opened at her feet. Sudden overpowering hate of him had flooded her senses and burst all barriers of reserve and self-control.

He had committed the Unpardonable Sin, in a woman’s eyes—the crime against her honour. To have won her, kissed her, cast her aside—that is in the heart of a woman to forgive. But not the other. He had betrayed her. Not only that, but he had stabbed to the very soul of her love. The sight of the weak man, who had added this crowning outrage to the havoc he had wrought in her life, goaded her into madness. The very tenderness, with which she had but lately regarded him, made the revulsion all the stronger.

“Oh God! I could kill you! I could kill you!” she had cried.

He had turned white to the lips, scared at the transformation of the calm, subdued woman into the fierce, quivering creature with glittering eyes and passion-strung words. The eternal, wild, savage woman, repressed for years in the depths of her soul, had leapt out upon him to rend him in her mad anger. She had pointed to the door, stamping her foot, driven him out of her sight. At the door he had paused, and looked at her with a strange mingling of manhood and submission in his eyes.

“I deserve my punishment—but I am not all bad. And so help me God, Kitty, my offer will hold good at any moment of my life!”

He had gone. She was alone, pacing the room, still shaken with the storm of elemental fury.

At last exhaustion weakened her. She drew aside the curtain before her bed, and threw herself down shivering with the shame that was eating into her bones.

“Oh, my God!” she moaned, “Oh, my God! That he should have learned—from him—”

She drew the sides of the pillow tight about her face. It was agony of degradation. Her body shuddered at the thought of his contempt, the shattering of his faith in her, the man’s revolt at the brutality of the revelation. She had been dragged through the mire before his eyes. In her degradation she saw herself the object of his loathing.

The sharp striking of the little Swiss clock on her writing-table roused her. She raised a drawn face and looked in its direction. It was only eleven. She had thought hours had passed while she had lain there shivering. A little sense of dismay crept over her. If those few minutes had passed like hours, what would be the length of the hours themselves that had to be lived through that day?

If only she had sent him that letter, she thought bitterly. She might have fallen in his eyes, but not to those depths. He would have understood. The tremulous hope that his love would remain unclouded had sustained her. If only she could have spoken. A cynical irony seemed to govern the world.

She went to the window and looked into the street. A sudden impulse to go out of doors into the open air came over her and as quickly died away. She could not bear to walk along the street or in the public gardens—before hundreds of human eyes. Her soul felt naked and ashamed. If it had been country, where she could have gone and hidden herself in a quiet far-off corner, and laid her face upon the grass, and let the tree-branches whisper to her alone, it would have been different. She shrank from the contact of men and women—and yet her heart sank with a despairing sense of loneliness.

The consciousness of it came with a shock, as to one, who, on a North Country fell, suddenly finds himself isolated from outer things by an impenetrable mist. She hurried away from the window, sat down, through sheer physical weariness, on the chair by her writing-table, and buried her face in her hands.

A servant brought up a note. A fearful pang shot through her that it might be from Raine. The first glance showed her Hockmaster’s handwriting. The envelope bore the printed heading of one of the cafés.

“If you have any pity, forgive me,”—it ran. “That I told you of my fault is proof of my earnest desire to begin a new life as regards you. I would give years of my life to win a kind word from you. All that was best and straightest in me spoke to you, Kitty. I am intensely miserable.”

She crumpled up the note and threw it aside. His misery indeed!

She looked at the clock. Half-past eleven. The thought came to her that all her life was to drag along at this pace, endless minutes to each hour.

The heat of her resentment against Hock-master cooled down, but the poignancy of her shame remained. The impulsive hope that had risen at the first sight of the letter left a train of new reflections. How could she ever meet Raine again?

She rose once more, and resumed her weary, restless movements about the room.

“Never, never!” she cried. “His eyes would kill me—he would be kind—Oh God! I couldn’t bear it. I would rather have him curse me! I would rather have him strike me! Oh, Raine, Raine, my darling, my love! I............