read her Norman aright aboard the Antoine--yet, still, George Masson
should take her away. A catastrophe had thrown Jean Jacques into
her arms; it would not be a catastrophe which would throw the
master-carpenter into her arms. It would be that they wanted each other.

The mirror gave her a look of dominance--was it her regular features and
her classic head? Does beauty in itself express authority, just because
it has the transcendent thing in it? Does the perfect form convey
something of the same thing that physical force--an army in arms,
a battleship--conveys? In any case it was there, that inherent
masterfulness, though not in its highest form. She was not an
aristocrat, she was no daughter of kings, no duchess of Castile, no dona
of Segovia; and her beauty belonged to more primary manifestations; but
it was above the lower forms, even if it did not reach to the highest.
"A handsome even splendid woman of her class" would have been the
judgment of the connoisseur.

As she looked in the glass at her clear skin, at the wonderful throat
showing so soft and palpable and tower-like under the black velvet
ribbon brightened by a paste ornament; as she saw the smooth breadth of
brow, the fulness of the lips, the limpid lustre of the large eyes, the
well-curved ear, so small and so like ivory, it came home to her, as it
had never done before, that she was wasted in this obscure parish of St.
Saviour's.

There was not a more restless soul or body in all the hemisphere than
the soul and body of Carmen Barbille, as she went from this to that
on the morning when Jean Jacques had refrained from killing the
soul-disturber, the master-carpenter, who had with such skill destroyed
the walls and foundations of his home. Carmen was pointlessly busy as
she watched for the return of Jean Jacques.

At last she saw him coming from the flume of the mill! She saw that he
stumbled as he walked, and that, every now and then, he lifted his head
with an effort and threw it back, and threw his shoulders back also, as
though to assert his physical manhood. He wore no hat, his hands were
making involuntary gestures of helplessness. But presently he seemed
to assert authority over his fumbling body and to come erect. His hands
clenched at his sides, his head came up stiffly and stayed, and with
quickened footsteps he marched rigidly forward towards the Manor.

Then she guessed at the truth, and as soon as she saw his face she was
sure beyond p