it feels like. Perhaps, I think, when it came to the point,
you'd have been afraid, or something. I wasn't. And I was young. I'm
young still. You can't judge me. Anyhow, I know what you've been
through. That's what made me sorry for you. Can't you be a little sorry
for me?"

Miss Keating said nothing. She was putting on her hat, and her mouth at
the moment was closed tight over a long hat-pin. She drew it out slowly
between her shut lips. Meeting Kitty's eyes she blinked.

"You needn't be sorry," said Kitty. "I've had things that you haven't."

Miss Keating turned to the looking-glass and put on her veil. Her back
was toward Kitty. The two women's faces were in the glass, the young and
the middle-aged, each searching for the other. Kitty's face was tearful
and piteous; it pleaded with the other face in the glass, a face furtive
with hate, that hung between two lifted arms behind a veil.

Miss Keating's hands struggled with her veil.

"I mayn't tie it for you?" said Kitty.

"No, thank you."

There was a knock at the door, and Miss Keating started.

"It's the men for your boxes. Come into my room and say good bye."

"I prefer to say good bye here, if it's all the same to you. Good bye."

"You won't even shake hands with me? Well, if you won't--why should
you?"

"I am holding out my hand. If you won't take it----"

"No, no. I don't want to take it."

Kitty was crying.

"I must let those men in," said Miss Keating. "You are not going to make
a scene?"

"I? Oh Lord, no. You needn't mind me. I'll go."

She went into her own room and flung herself, face downward, on to her
pillow, and slid by the bedside, kneeling, to the floor.

CHAPTER IX

At eight o'clock Mrs. Tailleur was not to be found in her room, or in
any other part of the hotel. By nine Lucy was out on the Cliff-side
looking for her. He was not able to account for the instinct that told
him she would be there.

The rain had ceased earlier in the evening. Now it was falling again in
torrents. He could see that the path was pitted with small, sharp
footprints. They turned and returned, obliterating each other.

At the end of the path, in the white chamber under the brow of the
Cliff, he made out first a queer, irregular, trailing black mass, then
the peak of a hood against the wall, and the long train of a woman's
gown upon the floor, and then, between the loops of the hood, the edge
of Mrs. Tailleur's white face, dim, but discernible.