she had seen the quietest and simplest solution of the tangle;
nobody but herself need suffer a single pang! Since she had endured so
much, she might now as well offer herself for the sake of everybody
else's happiness.

Such had been her dominating thought, as she had lain thinking through
the night. And the moment had come when she held the solution clear in
her mind. How glad she was that she had decided to live! Her parents had
been spared a cruel grief, and her affianced husband would be left to
his happiness without any alloy of remorse or tragic memories.

There was only one worthy and rational path before her. She must break
with Wyndham and leave him free. Mr. Shanner wanted her; she would give
herself to Mr. Shanner. His ashen figure, gray-clad, rose before her,
wistful, pleading, pathetic. She remembered his touch of sentiment, his
hint of deeper feeling--how he would have treasured her promise; how he
would have looked forward to "the new light to shine in his household."
He was good and honourable; full of kind actions. She knew that Mr.
Shanner had not found felicity in his first marriage. After all, if she
could bring somebody a little happiness she might as well do so; and she
could make this ostensibly the ground for her action. She and Wyndham
were unsuited to each other--could anything be truer? She had made a
mistake, since she now found she cared for Mr. Shanner, who reciprocated
the sentiment, and for whom, as regards upbringing and ideas, she would
make so much more suitable a wife. That was less true, and, after her
surrender of the evening before to her ignobler side, she now loathed
the idea of playing a further part. But the fiction that she cared for
Mr. Shanner, and her actual marriage with him, constituted in essence
the sacrifice that the position demanded of her. To Mr. Shanner she
could atone by incessant devotion--she would illumine the light in his
household he had spoken of so yearningly; her parents would be spared
all but the first painful surprise; to Wyndham the break would come as a
splendid release. It would restore to him his honour and self-respect,
since in his eyes, and in the world's eyes, she would be taking all the
blame for his freedom.

Wyndham had told her that Lady Lakeden was leaving England indefinitely,
and that he did not know when he was likely to see her again. But Alice
now did not believe that. That was part of the wall he had been building
behind which to p