hich, growing sterner and more critical of late, had ended
by boring him.

Before Rainham's death, Eve, in her private discussions of the
situation, had generally concluded by dismissing the subject
petulantly, with a summing-up only partially convincing, that
everything would come right in the end; that in time that miserable
scene would be forgotten or explained away; and that the old
intimacy, of which it was at once so bitter and so pleasant to
dream, would be restored.

Her training--of which her mother was justly proud--had endowed her
with a respect for social convention too great to allow her to think
of rebelling against the existing order of things. She consoled
herself by the reflection that at least she had committed no fault,
and that no active discipline of penitence could justly be expected
of her.

Concerning the truth of Rainham's story she could not fail to
harbour doubts; that her husband was concealing something was daily
more plainly revealed to her.

It was hard that she should suffer, but what could she do? At the
bottom of her heart, in spite of the feeling of resentment which
assailed her when--as it often did--the idea occurred to her that he
had not exhibited towards her the perfect frankness which their old
friendship demanded, she pitied Rainham. There were even times--such
was her state of doubt--when she pitied her husband, and blamed
herself for suspecting him of--she hardly owned what.

But, most of all, she pitied herself. She felt that in any case she
had been wronged, whether Philip's ill-told tale was true or false.

But her pride enabled her to keep her doubts locked within her own
heart, to present a smiling, if occasionally pale, face to the
world, in whose doings she took so large a part, and even to deceive
Mrs. Sylvester.

And now Philip was dead! The severance, which she had persuaded
herself was only temporary, was on a sudden rendered inexorably
complete and eternal.

The blow was a cruel one, and for a time it seemed to be succeeded
by a kind of rebellious insensibility. Eve felt demoralized, and
careless of the future; her frame of mind was precisely that of the
man who is making his first hasty steps along the headlong road
which is popularly spoken of as leading to the devil.

Later she began to reproach herself. She reflected, with a kind of
scornful wonder at her weakness, that she had allowed all chance of
explanation to escape; the one man whom she could