ce that was her own yet outside herself, bidding him ring for the
servant, bidding him give the order for a hansom, directing him to put
her in it when it came. Whence the strength came to her she knew not; but
an insistent voice warned her that she must leave the house openly, and
nerved her, in the hall before the hovering care taker, to exchange light
words with Trenor, and charge him with the usual messages for Judy, while
all the while she shook with inward loathing. On the doorstep, with the
street before her, she felt a mad throb of liberation, intoxicating as
the prisoner's first draught of free air; but the clearness of brain
continued, and she noted the mute aspect of Fifth Avenue, guessed at the
lateness of the hour, and even observed a man's figure--was there
something half-familiar in its outline?--which, as she entered the
hansom, turned from the opposite corner and vanished in the obscurity of
the side street.

But with the turn of the wheels reaction came, and shuddering darkness
closed on her. "I can't think--I can't think," she moaned, and leaned her
head against the rattling side of the cab. She seemed a stranger to
herself, or rather there were two selves in her, the one she had always
known, and a new abhorrent being to which it found itself chained. She
had once picked up, in a house where she was staying, a translation of
the EUMENIDES, and her imagination had been seized by the high terror of
the scene where Orestes, in the cave of the oracle, finds his implacable
huntresses asleep, and snatches an hour's repose. Yes, the Furies might
sometimes sleep, but they were there, always there in the dark corners,
and now they were awake and the iron clang of their wings was in her
brain . . . She opened her eyes and saw the streets passing--the familiar
alien streets. All she looked on was the same and yet changed. There was
a great gulf fixed between today and yesterday. Everything in the past
seemed simple, natural, full of daylight--and she was alone in a place of
darkness and pollution.--Alone! It was the loneliness that frightened
her. Her eyes fell on an illuminated clock at a street corner, and she
saw that the hands marked the half hour after eleven. Only half-past
eleven--there were hours and hours left of the night! And she must spend
them alone, shuddering sleepless on her bed. Her soft nature recoiled
from this ordeal, which had none of the stimulus of conflict to goad her
through it. Oh, th