lever
woman, but she is a woman of to-day. Her pleasures, her ambitions, her
friends----"

Clodagh lifted her head.

"--Her friends?" she said faintly.

"--Are not the friends for you--for any inexperienced girl. Take them
one by one. There is Serracauld--indolent, worthless, vicious;
Barnard--decent enough as a man's friend, and as honest as his clients
permit him to be, but no proper guide for a girl like you;
Deerehurst----"

But Clodagh checked him.

"Lord Deerehurst? What about Lord Deerehurst?" Her voice was high and
strained.

Gore made a gesture of contempt.

"Deerehurst----" he began hotly; then suddenly his tone changed.

"Mrs. Milbanke," he said earnestly, "whatever you may say, whatever you
may do, I cannot believe that in your heart you are in sympathy with
these people, whose one object in life is to gamble--to gamble with
honour, money, emotion--anything, everything that has the savour of
risk and the possibility of gain.

"You have no justification for belonging to these people. You have the
good things of life, the things many women are forced to
steal--position, a home, a good husband----"

At the last word Clodagh started violently. And with a quick impulsive
movement, Gore turned to her afresh.

"You are intoxicated with life--or what seems to you to be life! You
are forgetting realities. I have seen your husband. He is an honest,
simple, trustworthy man--who loves you."

The tone of his voice came to Clodagh with great distinctness. It
seemed the only living thing in a world that had suddenly become dead.
While she had been sitting rigid and erect in the stern of the gondola,
everything had altered to her mental vision--everything had undergone a
fundamental change. The purple twilight; the mysterious night scents;
the breezes blown in from the lagoon had become intangible, meaningless
things. She was conscious of nothing but Gore's clear words, of her own
soul, stripped of its self-deception. At last, with a faint movement,
she turned towards him.

"Take me home," she said in a numbed voice. "I wish to go home."

At the words, he wheeled round in sudden protest. But as his eyes
rested on her cold face, a tinge of self-consciousness chilled his
zeal--self-consciousness, and the suddenly remembered fact that his own
action was, after all, unjustifiable. His own figure suddenly
stiffened.

"As you wish, of course!" he said quietly. "I suppose my conduct seems
quite unpardonable."