e readiest means of effacing herself by suddenly marrying a
shallow coxcomb who seeks her for mercenary reasons, and going with him
to Australia. Years afterwards she is so affected by the sudden
reappearance of Rutherford, and by subsequent ill-treatment received
from her jealous husband, that an exhausting illness follows, and to
save herself from insanity she commits suicide. Meanwhile the long
separation of Rutherford and Betty Ochiltree, which began on the day of
their marriage, is coming to an end, and Hilda's death removes the final
impediment. Together they pay a last visit to the dead woman:

Incapable of speech, he lifted a tress of hair--flowing free over
the rigid arms, because it was really pretty, and thus had to be
made the most of--and pressed it a moment to his bearded mouth. In
that gesture he seemed to ask her forgiveness for having been a man
like other men, as Nature made them.

'Kiss _her_,' Betty whispered, pushing him a little. She, too, felt
that it would be something, if not much, to put to the account that
was so frightfully ill-balanced--a kiss from Rutherford before all
was wholly over.

He stooped and laid his lips--scarcely laid them--on the waxen
forehead. And he thought how he had nearly kissed her once, in the
scented spring dusk, at her father's gate, and been repelled at the
last moment by the thought of something that he could not see.... He
turned back the sheet and straightened it, and nobody but hired
undertakers had anything more to do with Hilda Donne. He put out the
lamps, leaving her in the dark, which, as a living, nervous woman,
she had always been afraid of; and he took Betty in his arms to
comfort her a little, before he opened the door upon the light and
life of their own transfigured world.

There is a characteristic vein of realism in the subsequent view of the
lovers' self-absorption and short-lived sorrow, and the callousness of
Donne.

No later than the same Saturday afternoon [Hilda was buried in the
morning], her Edward was cheering himself with his preparations for
New Zealand, whither he was easily persuaded to set off at once as a
means of distracting his mind from his domestic woes, and of
retiring gracefully from a Civil Service that was otherwise certain
to dismiss him; and there he shortly found a number of absorbing
interests, including--as Rutherfor