as well that these
tasks should devolve on her. They would serve to occupy her thoughts.

The morning sunlight, goldenly gay, was streaming in through the windows
as Magda, wrapped in a soft silken peignoir, made her way into the
bathroom. Virginie, her eyes reddened from a night's weeping, was
kneeling beside the sunken bath of green-veined marble, stirring
sweet-smelling salts in to the steaming water. Their fragrance permeated
the atmosphere like incense.

"My tub ready, Virginie?" asked Magda, cheerfully.

Virginie scrambled to her feet.

"_Mais oui, mademoiselle_. The bath is ready."

Then, her face puckering up suddenly, she burst into tears and ran
out of the room. Magda smiled and sighed, then busied herself with her
morning ablutions--prolonging them a little as she realised that this
was the last occasion for a whole year when she would step down into a
bath prepared and perfumed for her in readiness by her maid.

A year! It was a long time to look forward to. So much can happen in a
year. And no one can foresee what the end may bring.

Presently she emerged from her bath, her skin gleaming like wet ivory,
her dark hair sparkling with the drops of water that had splashed on to
it. As she stepped up from its green-veined depths, she caught a glimpse
of herself in a panel mirror hung against the wall, and for a moment she
was aware of the familiar thrill of delight in her own beauty--in the
gleaming, glowing radiance of perfectly formed, perfectly groomed flesh
and blood.

Then, with a revulsion of feeling, came the sudden realisation that
it was this very perfection of body which had been her undoing--like a
bitter blight, leaving in its wake a trail of havoc and desolation. She
was even conscious of a fierce eagerness for the period of penance to
begin. Almost ecstatically she contemplated the giving of her body to
whatever discipline might be appointed.

To anyone hitherto as spoiled and imperious as Magda, whose body had
been the actual temple of her art, and so, almost inevitably, of her
worship, this utter renouncing of physical self-government was the
supremest expiation she could make. As with Hugh Vallincourt, whose
blood ran in her veins, the idea of personal renunciation made a curious
appeal to her emotional temperament, and she was momentarily filled with
something of the martyr's ecstasy.

Gillian's arms clung round Magda's neck convulsively as she kissed her
at the great gates