hat he had shouted the words at the top of his voice,
that the whole multitude must have heard him, and must have seen the
look that he showed her for the briefest instant--the look of a damned
soul peering through flames that only she could quench.

At the full impact of pity and remorse at last, she felt her spirit
stumbling toward his through that inferno.

The promenaders perceived a woman and a man, expressionless though
rather worn and pale, exchanging apparently commonplace words, while
staring down at the horses.

"I'll phone you to-night----"

"Not the phone."

"With an indolent movement he thrust his shaking hands into his coat
pockets, and tried again:

"I'll drive over in the morning. You might be taking a walk----"

Weak and sick, she glanced down at the buttons of her gloves, before
rising to her feet. She heard Anna Zanidov saying to Fanny Brassfield,
"Well, I've lost those friends of mine. No matter. I'll find a taxi."
Pouncing upon this chance to escape, for the moment, from him and from
herself, Lilla blurted out:

"Let me give you a lift. Come on."

Cornelius Rysbroek saw her lovely head turning away from him, the swirl
of her cloak as she ascended the steps, the flash of her tapering boot
heel. He then stood looking round him through his ironical, weary
mask, one hand on the back of a chair, however, as if without that
support his quaking legs might let him fall to the floor.

CHAPTER XLII

The limousine glided northward. A cold rain was falling. Behind the
glistening windowpanes the scene was continually melting from one
blackness into another. At each flash of radiance
Madame Zanidov was revealed motionless in her corner, muffled in her
cloak, with closed eyes.

"Is she reading my thoughts?" Lilla wondered.

No matter: by this time the whole world must know them, released as
they had been, into that eager public air, like a deafening cry of
confession. "What's to be the end of this?" she asked herself,
appalled, as she felt her life being whirled along from one fatal
impulse to another, just as she was being whisked by the limousine from
darkness to darkness. To check that inexorable progress! to see some
constant light!

Anna Zanidov turned her wedge-shaped face toward Lilla, with the words:

"I have thought of you many times."

"I can say the same."

"To be sure," the Russian declared, "I have stopped doing that, you
know. I didn't want to end by being sh