ely deigned a reply. Her views of conduct, of
character, had undergone an abrupt and extraordinary change. Having
justified without shadow of argument her own incredible proceeding, she
judged everything and everybody by some new standard, mysteriously
attained. She was no longer the Rose Whiston of yesterday. Her old self
seemed an object of compassion. She felt an unspeakable happiness, and at
the same time an encroaching fear.

The fear predominated; when she grew aware of the streets of London looming
on either hand it became a torment, an anguish. Small-folded, crushed
within her palm, the piece of paper with its still unread inscription
seemed to burn her. Once, twice, thrice she met the look of her friend. He
smiled cheerily, bravely, with evident purpose of encouragement. She knew
his face better than that of any oldest acquaintance; she saw in it a manly
beauty. Only by a great effort of self-control could she refrain from
turning aside to unfold and read what he had written. The train slackened
speed, stopped. Yes, it was London. She must arise and go. Once more their
eyes met. Then, without recollection of any interval, she was on the
Metropolitan Railway, moving towards her suburban home.

A severe headache sent her early to bed. Beneath her pillow lay a scrap of
paper with a name and address she was not likely to forget. And through the
night of broken slumbers Rose suffered a martyrdom. No more
self-glorification! All her courage gone, all her new vitality! She saw
herself with the old eyes, and was shame-stricken to the very heart.

Whose the fault? Towards dawn she argued it with the bitterness of misery.
What a life was hers in this little world of choking respectabilities!
Forbidden this, forbidden that; permitted--the pride of ladyhood. And she
was not a lady, after all. What lady would have permitted herself to
exchange names and addresses with a strange man in a railway
carriage--furtively, too, escaping her father's observation? If not a lady,
what _was_ she? It meant the utter failure of her breeding and education.
The sole end for which she had lived was frustrate. A common, vulgar young
woman--well mated, doubtless, with an impudent clerk, whose noisy talk was
of beer and tobacco!

This arrested her. Stung to the defence of her friend, who, clerk though he
might be, was neither impudent nor vulgar, she found herself driven back
upon self-respect. The battle went on for hours; it exhausted her;