eauty might have
revived it. But the fact that it struck deeper, that it was inextricably
wound up with inherited habits of thought and feeling, made it as
impossible to restore to growth as a deep-rooted plant torn from its bed.
Selden had given her of his best; but he was as incapable as herself of
an uncritical return to former states of feeling.

There remained to her, as she had told him, the uplifting memory of his
faith in her; but she had not reached the age when a woman can live on
her memories. As she held Nettie Struther's child in her arms the frozen
currents of youth had loosed themselves and run warm in her veins: the
old life-hunger possessed her, and all her being clamoured for its share
of personal happiness. Yes--it was happiness she still wanted, and the
glimpse she had caught of it made everything else of no account. One by
one she had detached herself from the baser possibilities, and she saw
that nothing now remained to her but the emptiness of renunciation.

It was growing late, and an immense weariness once more possessed her.
It was not the stealing sense of sleep, but a vivid wakeful fatigue, a
wan lucidity of mind against which all the possibilities of the future
were shadowed forth gigantically. She was appalled by the intense
cleanness of the vision; she seemed to have broken through the merciful
veil which intervenes between intention and action, and to see exactly
what she would do in all the long days to come. There was the cheque in
her desk, for instance--she meant to use it in paying her debt to Trenor;
but she foresaw that when the morning came she would put off doing so,
would slip into gradual tolerance of the debt. The thought terrified
her--she dreaded to fall from the height of her last moment with Lawrence
Selden. But how could she trust herself to keep her footing? She knew the
strength of the opposing impulses-she could feel the countless hands of
habit dragging her back into some fresh compromise with fate. She felt an
intense longing to prolong, to perpetuate, the momentary exaltation of
her spirit. If only life could end now--end on this tragic yet sweet
vision of lost possibilities, which gave her a sense of kinship with all
the loving and foregoing in the world!

She reached out suddenly and, drawing the cheque from her writing-desk,
enclosed it in an envelope which she addressed to her bank. She then
wrote out a cheque for Trenor, and placing it, without an accompanying