first flush of her beauty and power--had changed her mind and called him
back to her. And he had gone.

The fact caused such intense misery as to leave no room for resentment.
At that moment there was not one spark of anger, one drop of bitterness
in Nell's emotion; only misery so acute, so agonizing, as to be like a
physical pain.

It seemed to her so natural, so reasonable, that he should desert her
when this siren with the melting eyes, the caressing laugh, should
beckon him; for who could have resisted her? Not any man who had once
loved her.

Nell's head moved slowly from side to side, like that of an animal
stricken to death. Her throat had grown tight, her eyes were hot and
burning, the sound, as of the plash of waves, sang in her ears; but she
could not cry. It seemed to her that she would never be able to cry
again. She looked vaguely at the other women as they walked at the far
end of the terrace, and she shivered as if with bodily fear. There was
something terrible, Circe-like, to her in the face, the movements, the
very voice of this woman who had taken Drake from her.

Presently the two exquisitely dressed figures passed into the house, and
Nell rose, steadying herself by the pedestal. As she did so, she looked
up. A streak of light shot right across the statue, and the cruel face
with its leering eyes seemed to smile down upon her mockingly,
jeeringly, and she actually shrank, as if she dreaded to hear the satyr
lips shoot some evil gibe at her.

And all the while the music, a waltz of Waldteufel's, soft and ravishing
and seductive, floated out to her, and mocked her with the memory of the
happiness that had been hers but an hour--half an hour ago. She
staggered to the edge of the terrace and leaned her head on her hands,
and, closing her eyes, tried hard to persuade herself that it was only a
dream; just a dream, from which she should wake shuddering at the unreal
misery one moment, then laughing at its unreality the next.

But it was true. The dream had been the happiness of the last few weeks,
and this was the awakening.

Before her mental vision passed, like a panorama, the days which the
gods had given her--that they might punish her all the more cruelly for
daring to be so happy.

Yes; how often had she asked herself what right she, Nell of Shorne
Mills, had to so much joy? What had she done to deserve it?

She remembered now how, sometimes, she had been terrified by the
intensity of her j