and his glorious strength over
himself. It was a long story, that had gradually grown clear in every
detail, that had gone far beyond death to a spiritual life in a place of
light, though it had always ended in something vaguely fearful that
brought her back to the world, and to her present living self, to begin
again. She could not go over it now, but she was conscious, and to her
shame, that the spell of perfect happiness had always been broken at
last by the taint of earthly longing and regret that crept up stealthily
from the world below, an evil mist, laden with poison and fever and
mortality.

That change had been undefined, though it had been horrible and
irresistible; it had been evil, but it had not been brutal, and it had
thrilled her with the certainty of passion and pain to come, realising
neither while dreading and loving both.

She had read the writings of men who believe that by long meditation and
practised intention the real self of man or woman can be separated from
all that darkens it, though not easily, because it is bound up with
fragments, as it were, of the selves of others, with all the
inheritances of a hundred generations of good and bad, with sleeping
instincts and passions any of which may suddenly spring up and overwhelm
the rest. She had also read that the real self, when found at last,
might be far better and purer than the mixed self of every day, which
each of us knows and counts upon; but that it might also be much worse,
much coarser, much more violent, when freed from every other influence,
and that coming upon it unawares and unprepared, men had lost their
reason altogether beyond recovery.

She asked herself now whether this was what had happened to her, and no
answer came; there was only the very weary blank of a great uncertainty,
in which anything might be, or in which there might be nothing; and
then, there was the vivid burning fear of meeting Lamberto Lamberti face
to face. That was by far the strongest and most clearly defined of her
sensations.

If the Princess Anatolie could have known what Cecilia felt that
morning, she would have been exceedingly well pleased, and Cecilia's own
mother would have considered that this was a case in which the powers of
evil had been permitted to work for the accomplishment of a good end.
Nothing could have distressed the excellent Countess more than that her
daughter should accidentally fall in love with Lamberti, who was a
younger son