re and dormant? And was it possible that the girls had
observed the qualities of Arthur's dancing and had observed nothing
else? Common sense tried to reassure her, and did not quite succeed. Her
attitude resembled that of a person who leans against a firm rail over
the edge of a precipice: there is no danger, but the precipice is so
deep that he fears; and though the fear is a torture the sinister
magnetism of the abyss forbids him to withdraw. She lived again in the
waltz; in the gliding motions of it, the delicious fluctuations of the
reverse, the long trance-like union, the instinctive avoidances of other
contact. She whispered the music, endlessly repeating those poignant and
voluptuous phrases which linger in the memory of all the world. And she
recalled and reconstituted Arthur's physical presence, and the emanating
charm of his disposition, and dwelt on them long and long. Instead of
lessening, the secret commotion within her increased and continued to
increase. While brooding with feverish joy over the immediate past, her
mind reached forward and existed in the appalling and fatal moment, for
whose reality however her eagerness could scarcely wait, when she should
see him once more. And it asked unanswerable questions about his
surprising return from New York, and his pallor, and the tremor in his
voice, and his swift departure. Suddenly she knew that she was planning
to have the girls out of the house to-morrow afternoon between four and
five o'clock.... Her spine shivered, she grew painfully hot, and tears
rushed to her eyes. She pitied herself profoundly. She said that she did
not know what was the matter with her, or what was going to happen. She
could not give names to things. She only felt that she was too
violently alive.

'Now, missis,' John roused her. The carriage had stopped and he had
already descended. She got out last, and Carpenter drove away while John
was still fumbling in his hip-pocket for the latchkey. The night was
humid and very dark. Leonora and the girls stood waiting on the gravel,
and John groped his way into the blackness of the portico to unfasten
the door. A faint gleam from the hall-gas came through the leaded
fanlight. This scarcely perceptible glow and the murmur of John's
expletives were all that came to the women from the mystery of the
house. The key grated in the lock, and the door opened.

'G----d d----n!' Stanway exclaimed distinctly, with fierce annoyance. He
had fallen h