ing these ten days she had been
schooling herself to face whatever might come--shame, exposure,
anything--she would not cry and beg for pity as she had done before.
But it was the end, the end, the end! The end of so much that had
given her a new soul during the last few months. She must go back to
those dreary years that had had no meaning in them, all those
purposeless grey days that had stretched in endless succession on to a
dismal future in which there shone no sun. Oh! he couldn't know what
it had all meant to her--it could be flung aside by him without regret.
For him it was a foolish memory, for her it was death.

The tears were coming, her lips were quivering, but she clenched her
hands until the nails dug into the flesh. The sun poured in a great
flood of colour through the window, and meanwhile her heart was broken.
She had read of it often enough and had laughed--she had not known that
it meant that terrible dull throbbing pain and no joy or hope or light
anywhere. But she spoke to him quietly.

"I had thought that you were braver, Robin. That you had cared enough
not to mind what they said. You are right: it has all been a mistake."

"Yes," he said doggedly, without looking at her. "We've been foolish.
I hadn't thought enough about others. You see after all one owes
something to one's people. It would never do, Dahlia, it wouldn't
really. You'd never like it either--you see we're different. At
Cambridge one couldn't see it so clearly, but here--well, there are
things one owes to one's people, tradition, and, oh! lots of things!
You have got your customs, we have ours--it doesn't do to mix."

He hadn't meant to put it so clearly. He scarcely realised what he had
said because he was not thinking of her at all; it was only that one
thing that he saw in front of him, how to get out, away, clear of the
whole entanglement, where there was no question of suspicion and
possible revelation of secrets. He was not thinking of her.

But the cruelty of it, the naked, unhesitating truth of it, stung her
as nothing had ever hurt her before--it was as though he had struck her
in the face. She was not good enough, she was not fit. He had said it
before, but then he had been angry. She had not believed it; but now
he was speaking calmly, coldly--she was not good enough!

And in a moment her idol had tumbled to the ground--her god was lying
pitifully in the dust, and all the Creed that she had learnt so