isfied with my own life, you showed me the pleasant
vistas of a different life, and when I hoped to enter with you, I
found myself outside and the door shut in my face. You have always
tried to make Roland dissatisfied with me. You insinuated, you
deplored, in every letter to him. You stabbed while you pretended to
kiss me. I found you out long ago. Everyone finds you out. You never
had a friend. You never will have one."

She spoke with that pitiless scorn which is the language of suppressed
passion. Elizabeth only lifted her eyebrows and turned away from her.
And Denasia knew that she had made a mistake, and yet she did not
regret it. There are times when it is a relief to be angry, whether we
do well to be so or not; when to lose the temper is better than to
keep it. Of course there are great and beautiful souls with whom
nothing turns to bitterness, but the soul of Denasia was not one of
these. It had been born ready to feel and ready to speak, and regarded
it as something of a virtue to do so.

She left Elizabeth's house in a very unhappy mood, and at a rapid walk
proceeded to her lodging in Bloomsbury. She would have felt the
confinement of a cab to be intolerable, but it was a relief to set her
personality against the friction of a million of encompassing wills.
And in a short time she succumbed to that condition of electricity
which they evolve, and permitted herself to be moved by it without
considering her steps.

At length she was hungry, and she turned into a place of refreshment
and ate with more healthy desire than she had felt for many months,
and then the restless, fretting creature within was pacified, and she
resolved to walk quietly to her room and sleep before she suffered
herself to think any more. But as she was following out this plan she
came to a famous theatre, and the name at the entrance attracted her.
"I will be my own judge," she said. "I will see, and hear, and be more
unmerciful to myself than any other could be."

So she entered the place and sat throughout three scenes. She did not
wait for the final act. There was no necessity. She had arrived at her
verdict. It was in her eyes and attitude when she left the building,
but she gave it no voice until she sat weary and sad before the
glimmering fire in her room.

"I could be Queen of England as easily as I could be a prima donna,"
she said mournfully. "There was perhaps a time--perhaps--perhaps, when
youth and beauty and love could