e of a
Hindoo idol; but Miss Quincey had not noticed that); his bumpy forehead
was terrible with intelligence; his eyes were cold and comprehensive; the
smile of a foregone conclusion flickered on his lips.

He must have known it all the time. There never had been any
misunderstanding. That was the clue to his conduct; that was the reason
why he had left off coming to the house; for he was the soul of delicacy
and honour. And yet she had never said a word that might be
interpreted--He must have seen it in her face, then,--that day--when
she allowed herself to sit with him in the park. She remembered--things
that he had said to her--did they mean that he had seen? She saw it all
as he had seen it. "Delicacy" and "honour" indeed! Disgust and contempt
would be more likely feelings.

She lay awake all Saturday night and all Sunday night, until four o'clock
on Monday morning; always reviewing the situation, always going over the
same patch of ground in the desperate hope of finding some place where
her self-respect could rest, and discovering nothing but the traces of
her guilty feet. A subtler woman would have flourished lightly over the
territory, till she had whisked away every vestige of her trail; another
would have seen the humour of the situation and blown the whole thing
into the inane with a burst of healthy laughter; but subtlety and humour
were not Miss Quincey's strong points. She could do nothing but creep
shivering to bed and lie there, face to face with her own enormity.

On Monday morning and on many mornings after she crept out into the
street stealthily, like a criminal seeking some shelter where she could
hide her head. She acquired a habit--odd enough to the casual
onlooker--of slinking cautiously round every turning and rushing every
crossing in her abject terror of meeting Bastian Cautley.

There was nobody to tell her that it would not matter if she did meet
him; no cheerful woman of the world to smile in her frightened face and
say: "My dear Miss Quincey, there is nothing remarkable in this. We all
do it, sooner or later. Too late? Not a bit of it; better too late than
never, and if it's that Cautley man I'm sure I don't wonder. I'm in love
with him myself. Lost your self-respect, have you? Self-respect, indeed,
why bless your soul, you are all the nicer for it. As for hiding your
head I never heard such rubbish in my life. Nobody is looking at
you--certainly not the Cautley man. In fact, to tell y