time? What a defection hers would be! For she had resolved to take
a plunge into middle age. No gliding into it for her! She would let
everything go which was ready to go naturally. Her Greek had already
lost his job, although as yet he did not know it.

Caroline Briggs would believe that the change which was at hand, the
change which would be discussed, perhaps laughed at, praised by some,
condemned by others, had been brought about by the conversation in
the Persian Room. She would never know the truth. No one of Lady
Sellingworth's set would ever know it. For no one, except a thief and
his underlings, knew of the last folly of poor old Adela Sellingworth!

Poor old Adela Sellingworth!

As Lady Sellingworth called herself bitterly by that name tears at last
came into her luminous eyes. Secretly she wept over herself, although
the tears did not fall down upon her cheeks. She had done many foolish
things, many wild things, many almost crazy things in her life. But that
day she had surely been punished for them all. When she thought of the
thieves' plot against her, of the working out of it, she saw herself
lying, like a naked thing, in the dust. Such men! How had they known her
character? Somehow they must have got to know it, and devised their plan
to appeal to it. They had woven just the right net to catch her in its
folds. She seemed to hear their hideous discussions about her. The long
look in Bond Street had been the first move in the horrible game. And
she in her folly had connected the game with romance, with something
like love even.

Love! A life such as hers had been was the prostitution of love, and
now she deserved to be loveless for the rest of her life. Vanity and
sensuality had been her substitutes for love. She had dealt in travesty
and had pretended, even to herself, that she was following reality. It
was amazing how she had managed to deceive herself.

She would never do that again.

Very late that night, alone in her bedroom, she sat before a mirror and
looked into it, saying good-bye to the self which she had cherished and
fostered so long, had lived for recklessly sometimes, ruthlessly almost
always. She saw a worn, but still very handsome woman. But she told
herself that the woman was hideous. For really she was looking at the
woman underneath, the woman who was going to emerge very soon into the
daylight with a frankly lined face crowned with grey or perhaps even
white hair, at the woman w