ered
gas-jet. And presently my breathing fell into the quiet rhythm of the
sleep which descended on her at last. My thought was that now nothing
mattered in the world because I had the world safe resting in my arms--or
was it in my heart?

Suddenly my heart seemed torn in two within my breast and half of my
breath knocked out of me. It was a tumultuous awakening. The day had
come. Dona Rita had opened her eyes, found herself in my arms, and
instantly had flung herself out of them with one sudden effort. I saw
her already standing in the filtered sunshine of the closed shutters,
with all the childlike horror and shame of that night vibrating afresh in
the awakened body of the woman.

"Daylight," she whispered in an appalled voice. "Don't look at me,
George. I can't face daylight. No--not with you. Before we set eyes on
each other all that past was like nothing. I had crushed it all in my
new pride. Nothing could touch the Rita whose hand was kissed by you.
But now! Never in daylight."

I sat there stupid with surprise and grief. This was no longer the
adventure of venturesome children in a nursery-book. A grown man's
bitterness, informed, suspicious, resembling hatred, welled out of my
heart.

"All this means that you are going to desert me again?" I said with
contempt. "All right. I won't throw stones after you . . . Are you
going, then?"

She lowered her head slowly with a backward gesture of her arm as if to
keep me off, for I had sprung to my feet all at once as if mad.

"Then go quickly," I said. "You are afraid of living flesh and blood.
What are you running after? Honesty, as you say, or some distinguished
carcass to feed your vanity on? I know how cold you can be--and yet
live. What have I done to you? You go to sleep in my arms, wake up and
go away. Is it to impress me? Charlatanism of character, my dear."

She stepped forward on her bare feet as firm on that floor which seemed
to heave up and down before my eyes as she had ever been--goatherd child
leaping on the rocks of her native hills which she was never to see
again. I snatched the arrow of gold from the table and threw it after
her.

"Don't forget this thing," I cried, "you would never forgive yourself for
leaving it behind."

It struck the back of the fur coat and fell on the floor behind her. She
never looked round. She walked to the door, opened it without haste, and
on the landing in the diffused light from the g