omfort, and wellbeing of it all! Yet this first
night, passed in the familiar luxury which had lapped her round since
childhood, was a harder, more bitter night than any of the preceding
three hundred and sixty-five she had spent tossing weary, aching limbs
on a lumpy straw mattress with a coarse brown woollen blanket drawn up
beneath her chin, vexing her satin skin.

For each of those nights had counted as a step onwards along the hard
road that was to lead her back eventually to Michael. Now she knew that
they had all been endured in vain. Spiritually her self-elected year of
discipline might have fitted her to be the wife of "Saint Michel."
But the undimmed physical beauty and charm which Michael, the man and
artist, would crave in the woman he loved was gone.

The recognition of these things rushed over her, overwhelming her with a
sense of blank and utter failure. It meant the end of everything. As
far as she was concerned, life henceforward held nothing more. There
was nothing to hope for in the future--except to hope that Michael might
never see her again! At least, she would like to feel that his memory
of her--of the Wielitzska whose lithe grace and beauty had swept him
headlong even against the tide of his convictions--would remain for ever
unmarred.

It was a rather touching human little weakness--the weakness and
prayer of many a woman who has lost her lover. . . . Let him remember
her--always--as she was before the radiance of youth faded, before grief
or pain blurred the perfection that had been hers!

Perhaps for Magda the wish was even stronger, more insistent by reason
of the fact that her beauty had been of so fine and rare a quality,
setting her in a way apart from other women.

With the instinct of the wounded wild creature she longed to hide--to
hide herself from Michael, so that she might never see in his eyes that
look of quickly veiled disappointment which she knew would spring into
them as he realised the change in her. She felt she could not bear that.
It would be like a sword-thrust through her heart. . . . Better if she
had never left the sisterhood!

Suddenly every nerve of her tautened. Supposing--supposing she returned
there, never to emerge again? No chance encounter could ever then bring
her within sight or sound of Michael. She would be spared watching
the old, eager look of admiration fade suddenly from the grey eyes she
loved.

Hour after hour she lay there, dry-eyed, staring