Sir Arthur had, as he foretold, little difficulty in finding his wife's room; indeed, her door had been left open, and she stood directly in his line of vision as he came upstairs. A lighted candle aloft in her hand, she seemed to be examining a picture that hung on the panel immediately above her dressing-table.

He came in quickly, with his short consequential step, and closed the door behind him. At the sound of the clicking lock she wheeled round, still holding the candle above her head. The light played upon the outstanding aureole of her hair, caught on one side the scarlet oval of her cheek, the gleam of her teeth between lips, open as upon amazement. Her rapid breathing shook her as she stood; and the darkling brilliancy of her jet-flecked robe ran all about, and up and down the long lines of her limbs, as if she had been clothed in black fires.

"You said you were sick," he exclaimed tartly, "and I find you looking at a picture."

She made no reply, but stood, still holding up her light, shimmering and quivering, a thing of such extraordinary vividness and beauty, out of the half-darkness of the room, that in admiration he felt his righteous wrath once more slip from him.

"Really, my dear Rosamond," he went on, in mollified tones, "you should try and have a little more self-control. I cannot imagine what Lady Aspasia must think of you. I declare any one might have thought—I don't know what they might not have thought," concluded Sir Arthur, somewhat lamely.

Rosamond put down the candlestick on the table beside her, then stood clasping her hands tightly together, her head bent in the attitude of a chidden child. She was making a strong effort after her vanishing sanity. It was, perhaps, the old instinctive dread of violent emotion, or the realisation that here was the crisis at last, hitherto so deliberately thrust from her thoughts, that braced her to meet the moment. It may have been, after all, the fact that it was Sir Arthur the taskmaster, not Sir Arthur the fond husband, that stood before her. However it might be, something of the sweet reasonableness that had made her so acceptable a consort to the Lieutenant-Governor all these years did, in truth, seem to come back to her. She answered, very gently:

"Indeed, I owe you all an apology. You will explain it to the others, will you not? I am really ill."

Ill; tut, tut! What was she feeling? Was she sick; had she a pain; had she a cough? He lit another candle to look at her. Had she taken her temperature. Where was the thermometer?

With an unutterable failing of the heart, the atmosphere of her whole life as Lady Gerardine seemed suddenly to close round her once more; the intolerable solicitude, the tyrannic fondness, the perpetual, ineluctable watchfulness, how had she endured it? But she must be calm. What was it Baby had said? "Anything would be better than a scandal." These holy walls, this consecrate house—oh, no, they should never echo the wranglings of her most unholy union!

Sir Arthur was turning over the trinkets on her dressing-table. Where was the thermometer?

She did not know.

Not know where the thermometer was!

"I don't think I've got one," said Lady Gerardine, faintly. "But it's not fever; it's not that! Indeed, I only want rest——"

He turned, in real indignation and surprise.

"Not got one?"

"Perhaps if you were to ask Aspasia——" The suggestion was coupled with a wild look at the door.

Sir Arthur laughed, not very pleasantly. One would almost have thought she wanted to get rid of him. Women were certainly incomprehensible creatures.

"You have not mislaid your pulse, I take it."

She retreated from his touch till she could retreat no further; then, brought up by the wall, slid both her hands behind her.

"I'm not ill in that way. You know I always did hate being fussed about. Aspasia told you I had a headache. It is true, I have a headache. I only want to be alone; I only want to sleep."

Sir Arthur stood surveying her. Poor gentleman; his mind was generally in a compact and neatly labelled condition, quite ready with an adequate theory for each event of life. But to-night it was as if some one had been making hay in the tidy compartments. His ideas were positively jumbled. Scarcely did he seem to have a proper hold of one when the next would send him off at a tangent. He had come upstairs to make his wife feel how grievously she had offended his idea of decorum, and had immediately lost himself in admiration of her appearance. And now, once more, in the very midst of his real anxiety about her health, he found himself abjectly remarking what an extraordinarily beautiful woman she was.

"I'm not so sure," he said suddenly, half fondly, half irritably, "that those red cheeks are a very good sign."

He put out a finger and stroked the velvet outline. She closed her eyes and set her teeth, nerving herself against the agony of the caress.

"I left a white rose," he went on, with elaborate gallantry; "I find a red one. My dear, your cheeks are certainly very hot."

That voice from the past, to which Rosamond's ears had been so acutely attuned these days, suddenly took up the words: "My white rose, my red, red rose!" As the sailor feels the raft break beneath him, she felt the last shreds of her self-control giving way under the stress of seas of passion and terror. She looked round desperately; almost, she thought, that man—that intruder—must have heard the dear voice also. Oh, sacrilege to have him standing there!

"Will you not leave me?" she cried, with a burst of pleading. "I must rest. You were always kind to me—will you not leave me now? Indeed, I am in pain."

"My darling!" he exclaimed, in genuine concern.

That flush was unnatural, it was evident. She had wasted away, too. He could see that. She who used to have such a noble, full throat; and her breathing came all too quick.

"Come, my darling," he went on, "let me see you to bed myself. No one, you know, can look after you as I do. I should not have trusted you away from me all this time. Come, come, we must let this hair down to ease the poor head—your golden hair, Rosamond. It is not the first time I have unbound it—eh, my love?"

"Your golden hair, Rosamond..." whispered the voice in her heart. What sort of a woman was she that another should dare use these sacred words of love to her? She fixed her piteous eyes upon Sir Arthur, as if, by the sheer intensity of dread, she could keep him from her. But he stretched out his arms.

She shrank, flattening herself against the wall, one arm raised across her brow as though to protect her hair.

"One would almost think you were shy—afraid of me," said he, jocularly, while his embrace hovered over her.

"Once there was fear of me in your eyes..."

"Don't touch me!" she shrieked. "Oh, your horrible hands!"

There fell instantly between them the silence of the irremediable deed.

Rosamond had at last torn across the interwoven fabric of their two lives; the ugly rending sound of the parting hung in the air. These gaping edges no seam could ever join again. To the woman came a fierce realisation of freedom, a sweeping anger at the petty shackles that had held her so long.

Sir Arthur stepped back, his arms falling by his side. He, poor man, felt as if the good old world, of which he was such an ornament, had ceased to be solid beneath his feet.

"Rosamond!"

"What are you doing here?" she cried, in a panting whisper. "What do you want with me? How dare you come into this room?"

"Rosamond!"

"Go!" she bade him, pointing to the door. "In the name of God, leave me. Merciful Heavens ... to follow me here! Have you not a spark of human feeling left in you? Is it not bad enough, is it not terrible, hideous, that you should be in this house at all?" She caught him by the arm, pushin............