r, she could not say. One
salient, awful fact she began gradually to realize, that if she sank back
upon the pillows she was lost. Little it would profit her to save her
body. She had no choice between her present precarious foothold and the
abyss, and wounded as she was she would have to fight. There was no
retreat:

She sat up, and presently got to her feet and went to the window and
stared through the panes until she distinguished the blue whiteness of
the fallen snow on her little balcony. The night, despite the clouds, had
a certain luminous quality. Then she drew the curtains, searched for the
switch, and flooded the room with a soft glow--that beautiful room in
which he had so proudly installed her four months before. She smoothed
the bed, and walking to the mirror gazed intently at her face, and then
she bathed it. Afterwards she opened her window again, admitting a flurry
of snow, and stood for some minutes breathing in the sharp air.

Three quarters of an hour later she was dressed and descending the
stairs, and as she entered the library dinner was announced. Let us spare
Honora the account of that repast or rather a recital of the conversation
that accompanied it. What she found to say under the eyes of the servants
is of little value, although the fact itself deserves to be commended as
a high accomplishment; and while she talked, she studied the brooding
mystery that he presented, and could make nothing of it. His mood was
new. It was not sullenness, nor repressed rage; and his answers were
brief, but he was not taciturn. It struck her that in spite of a
concentration such as she had never in her life bestowed on any other
subject, her knowledge of him of the Chiltern she had married--was still
wofully incomplete, and that in proportion to the lack of perfection of
that knowledge her danger was great. Perhaps the Chiltern she had married
was as yet in a formative state. Be this as it may, what she saw depicted
on his face to-night corresponded to no former experience.

They went back to the library. Coffee was brought and carried off, and
Honora was standing before the fire. Suddenly he rose from his chair,
crossed the room, and before she could draw away seized and crushed her
in his arms without a word. She lay there, inert, bewildered as in the
grip of an unknown force, until presently she was aware of the beating of
his heart, and a glimmering of what he felt came to her. Nor was it an
understandable