as quivering violently, but
she held her head high.

"Yes," she said, distinctly. "Yes, you are quite right. There is more in
this matter than his love for me. There is also my love for him!"

Her eyes were blazing; her heart was beating fast. With an agitation
equal to Bale-Corphew's own she moved to the fireplace and pressed the
bell.

When the servant appeared she turned to her.

"Norris," she said, in a quiet voice, "show Mr. Bale-Corphew out."

CHAPTER IX

There are few phases of human existence more interesting than that in
which a young and sensitive woman is compelled by circumstances to cast
aside the pleasant artifices, the carefully modulated emotions of a
sheltered life, and to face the realities of fact and feeling.

For twenty-three years Enid Witcherley had played with existence--toying
with it, enjoying it, as an epicure enjoys a rare wine or a choice
morsel of food prepared for his appreciation. Now, as she stood alone in
her small drawing-room with its costly decorations, its feminine
atmosphere, she was conscious for the first time that the banquet of
life is not in reality a display of delicate viands and tempting
vintages, but a meal of common bread--sweet or bitter as destiny
decrees. She saw this, and with a flash of comprehension knew and
acknowledged that her heart and her brain cried out for the wholesome
necessary food.

An hour ago, when the Prophet had stood before her and made his
confession, she had been overwhelmed by the tide of her own feelings; in
the rush of humiliation and disappointment--in the tremendous knowledge
that the image she had called gold was in reality but clay--she had been
too mortified to see beyond her own horizon. In that moment their places
in the drama had been indisputably allotted. She herself had appeared
the unoffending heroine, unjustly humiliated in her own eyes and in the
eyes of others; he had stood out, in unpardonable guise, the cause--the
instrument--of that humiliation. In the bitter knowledge she had
confronted him unrelentingly. A spoiled child--an unreasoning feminine
egoist.

But now that moment, with its instructive and primitive emotions, was
passed by what seemed months--years--a century. By a process of mind as
swift as it was subtle, the child had grown into a woman--the egoist had
become conscious of another existence. With the entrance of
Bale-Corphew--with the sound of her own denunciation upon his lips--a
new feeling ha