er face. Her pose was rigid and
unmoving; an attitude of distress and high-keyed misery of spirit.

Her thoughts were her own and safe from penetration, but their tenor was
as obvious as though, instead of sitting alone in a stunned silence, she
were proclaiming her crisis in Hamlet's resonant soliloquy.

There was a droop of surrender in her usually gallant shoulders and a
limpness in her whole body which even the darkness did not entirely
conceal. Within herself she admitted that her resolution had come to the
condition of a stronghold so long besieged that it is no longer strong:
where only the grim spirit of holding out against odds is left to keep
the colors flying.

But perhaps if she could have a half hour of relief from the pitiful
counterfeit of strength she might develop a fresh power of resistance.
In all sieges there must be moments like that: moments when, if the
enemy only knew, a quick assault would end the fight. If the enemy did
not discover them, they passed without defeat.

Her young and splendid body seemed to her a temple out of which she had
driven the love god, the deity of motherhood and the glowing lights of
wholesome sex ... and where she had set up instead a pale allegiance of
soulless form. Her life seemed a thing of quenched torches and unlit
lamps.

Conscience Tollman was in a dangerous mood, and some of her belligerency
of spirit Stuart Farquaharson saw as he came quietly to her side and
spoke her name, gently, as one might speak to a sleep walker.

"Why did you come?" She looked at him a little wildly and her voice
shook. "I wanted to be alone."

"I was troubled about you," he said very gently. "You had been away so
long."

Her courage was almost prostrate, but it still had that resilient power
which rises from exhaustion for one effort more. There was in her the
spirit of the Phoenix, and realizing how clearly he would read defeat
in the limp droop of her shoulders, she straightened them, not abruptly,
but as one who has been sitting at ease draws up into a less careless
attitude upon the arrival of another. She even smiled and spoke with a
voice no longer tremulous.

"Yes, I did stay longer than necessary. The music bored me and down here
it was very quiet--and inviting."

"Conscience," he said seriously, "you were more than bored, you were
distracted."

But at that, she laughed almost convincingly. "Must one be distracted to
enjoy an occasional moment of solitude? It's th