The next day, Violet, entering the brilliant room, gazed first about it and then at Leilah.

“Aurelia is not here? That’s odd. She is simply horrid but so reliable. You don’t mind my having told her to meet me?”

Leilah sighed. “I am getting so that soon I shan’t mind anything.”

Violet, seating herself, nodded vivaciously.

“I call that very fine. But there is something finer. Never mind anybody. Silverstairs now——” and as the lady spoke she summoned a smile feline and Cheshire—“he fancied I would be a good, obedient little wife. Instead of which he is a good, obedient big husband.” In entire self-appreciation she exhibited the tip of her tongue and moistened her lips with it. “It takes us, doesn’t it? But forgive me, dear, us is perhaps an exaggeration. I am afraid you have made rather a mess of things. Now what are you going to do?”

Without replying, Leilah looked away. During the night she had barely slept. The incident in the restaurant, events that had preceded it, anterior complications, subsequent developments, these things, like the Bohemians at Paillard’s, had stormed at her, attacked her fibres, wrenched her nerves, striating the darkness of her room with variations on the tragedy of her life.

In what manner the affair in the restaurant had terminated, she had no one to inform her but she could readily fancy that shortly d’Arcy and Barouffski would go somewhere and fight, or pretend to, and then return, none the worse and none the better, but with honour satisfied and their names in print.

The entire episode was shameful. But though provoked by her she had not premeditated it. In offering d’Arcy her glass, she had wished solely to display her independence. Subsequently, in going over the matter, she had realised that the wish, while human, had not been nice. Then, a bit conscience-stricken, she had wondered how she could have behaved as she had.

“I did it without thinking,” was her immediate excuse. But that, she told herself was untrue. Ever since the duel and the blow and the nightmare that followed, some such wish had been fermenting in her. The wish, reasonable in itself, though in her case unreasoned, persisted, as in certain natures a wish will persist, until, after the fashion of a constantly recurring idea, the individual becomes so saturated with it that, given the impulse, given less than that, given a vibration, some effect, perhaps wholly atmospheric, and suddenly the idea has solidified into an act, an act noble, degrading or merely banal, according to the influence that produced it, but an act which, whatever its character, has then become inevitable, even involuntary, its constant mental recurrence having exhausted the ability to choose between it and another.

Leilah had thought of this and, in search of comfort, had groped for another excuse. As an Oriental will say: “My body is tired.” “My body is hungry,” so Leilah decided: “It was my nerves that did it.”

But the sophistry displeased her. She knew that she had judged and condemned Barouffski and she knew also that she had no right to do either. The man was clearly a cad, a scoundrel and a brute, yet even though he were these things and worse and more besides, he so became in her eyes merely because her consciousness had evolved to a point higher than his own. Seen from a different angle, she might appear only a shade less reprehensible, and it might be, even equally vile. Moreover, according to the Upanishads, this consciousness of hers and that consciousness of his were fundamentally one. Both had come from the same source. To that source both would ultimately return. They would be fused there, as originally there they had been merged.

At the apperception of that, the curious lines which occur in the Book of Dzyan suggested themselves:

“Said the Flame to the Spark: ‘I have clothed myself in thee, thou art my image, my body, until that day when thou shalt rebecome myself and others, thyself and me.’”

In the penetrating beauty of the allegory Leilah told herself that she, Barouffski, Verplank, the Silverstairs, the Helley-Quetgens, everybody whom she knew, everyone whom she did not know, all the fillers of space, were sparks of one Flame, the Flame from which they had been formerly emitted and into which they would finally return. That, she felt she must believe, if she were to believe anything. But she felt too that though she did believe it, she believed also that for the present there were sparks better parted than united, as there were also others better united than apart.

On the table before her was a treatise on the Paramitas—which are The Blessed Things. She looked at it, knowing that what she had done was wrong and what she was about to do was evil. But she felt also that she could not help herself. Whatever the penalty, it was impossible for her to live with Barouffski. Whatever the punishment, it was impossible for her not to live with Verplank. At the moment it seemed to her as though the high fates had set her in a circle from which she could not escape except by the door of death or that of further sinning. At this idea she wondered about Barouffski as, after Verplank’s eruption at the Joyeuses, she had wondered about him. She wondered whether in some former existence she had injured Barouffski and whether it were for that reason that she had been led into giving him the power to injure her now. It might be so, she told herself, in which case she ought to bear it. But how could she know that it was so? Yet even though it were and the fact were made clear to her, even then, even too if the certainty of a punishment more poignant than any were shaken in her eyes, still she could not bear it.

“But I ought to,” she found herself saying.

These reflections Violet’s advent had interrupted.

“What are you going to do?” the lady was asking.

Leilah, unfit at the moment for battle, felt unable to tell. She looked away.

“Nothing, I suppose.”

Violet, cocking a belligerent eye, threw out:

“You carry moderation to excess.”

Leilah looked up. “What would you have me do?”

“Divorce Barouffski.”

“Because he threw champagne about? I hardly fancy I could get a divorce for that.”

Militantly Violet whipped off a glove. “Frankly that creature is a criminal. Never, in all my life, have I seen such an exhibition of bad taste. But then, as they say here, bad taste leads to crime—to such vulgar forms of it at that.”

“Even so, I don’t see how it helps me.”

“But he struck you,” Violet, more bellicose than ever, exclaimed. “You told me so. What more would you have. But aren’t you difficile to-day!” Suspiciously she considered her friend. “You’ve got something up your sleeve.”

“If I have,” Leilah, in an effort to parry the thrust, replied, “at least it is not witnesses.”

Cogently Violet nodded. “Come to me then. Divorce is the mother-in-law of invention. If you haven’t any witnesses, I’ll find something else. I make a specialty of finding things before they are lost.”

This programme hardly suited Leilah’s book. Again she parried. “Last night—and what a night!—I dreamed I was feasting with the dead. It was so peaceful. It is that that I want. It is peace the very fibres of my being crave.”

Here were heights—or depths—where Violet could not follow. With a smile she tacked.

“Before you dreamed your dream I noticed that you wore a very ducky frock.”

“It is stained. So am I. The champagne Barouffski threw stained me within and without.”

Here were other heights. Readily Violet skirted them.

“I believe I got a drop or two myself. But then I don’t mind. It is true I am not a theosophist.”

At this, in indignation at herself, Leilah protested.

“Theosophy is primarily a school of good manners. In giving d’Arcy my glass, mine were detestable.”

Now they were on surer ground. Wickedly Violet winked.

“Nobody has any manners any more or, when they do, they have them in plenty and all of them bad.”

“If I have an excuse,” Leilah continued, “it is that Gulian drove me nearly demented.”

Now, Violet felt, they were getting at it. Mentally she girded herself and with an engaging appearance of sympathy, exclaimed:

“A man never does that unless he loves a woman to distraction.”

The sympathy, however feigned, did its work. After all, Leilah reflected, why should she not tell what she was about to do? On the impulse she turned.

“Violet, I offered Barouffski half my fortune to free me. His reply was a blow. Apart from that I have no grounds for a divorce, none at least which I can show. Previously there was something between Gulian and me. It has gone. He cares for me still and I care for him. Shortly he is to be here. For a long time I hesitated. But after last night—after the nights and days that preceded it!—it does not seem to me that I need hesitate any more.”

Pausing, she drew breath. “Violet, when he comes I am to go with him. Is there a reason why I should not?”

Violet, who had long suspected as much, now at last had nailed it. Cautiously she buckled to.

“No. Not one. On the contrary. There is every reason why you should. Every reason. Particularly as to greet you there will be the disdainful eyes, the lifted skirts, the averted heads, every one of the very slight and very fiendish tortures that are visited on the woman who has gone and done it.”

For a second she too paused, then with a war whoop added:

“But you can’t do anything of the kind. I won’t let you.”

“Would you turn from me also?”

“I! Merciful fathers! But I am not the world. No matter what is done in private, the world does not care. The world is very well bred. It never sees anything that was not intended for it. But on the open scandal of scandalous conduct instantly it turns its well bred back. It will turn it on you.”

Indifferently Leilah assented. She had examined this phase of the matter. It had not seemed very important.

“No doubt,” she replied. “Yet then destiny seldom closes a door without opening another. I told you of my dream. It was a dream of peace. Here there can be none. It may be my karma perhaps. But this,” she continued, motioning at the brilliant room, “this is my prison.”

She hesitated and a bit lamely concluded:

“It is horrible to be in such a place.”

“And worse to be nowhere at all,” Violet shot at her. In firing she had sat up. Now, lolling back on the cushions, she enigmatically resumed: “You may be right though. I daresay it is dreadful to be in prison. I daresay it is even worse than you think.”

Enigmatic still, she smiled. With another shot, with two at most, Leilah, she told herself, would be routed.

“It is as though I were in a vortex,” the latter was saying. “It is as though I were being torn from places where I do not wish to be to others I may not like. But can one argue with a vortex? It is idle even to struggle. Whether you will or you won’t, you have to let yourself go.”

Lightly, in her most worldly manner, Violet laughed.

“Never in the world! A woman should never let herself go—except in an aeroplane. At a pinch a four-in-hand might do, but——”

At the moment the lady was thoroughly en veine and, sure of victory, might have bantered on, but this, Aurelia, ushered by Parker, prevented.

Sharply Violet threw at her: “Where have you been?”

Ignoring Violet, Aurelia nodded at Leilah.

“I was here the other day, did they tell you?”

She turned and with blithe impertinence looked her sister up and down.

“Don’t be so ordinary as to ask a girl where she has been. If you are inquisitive, ask where she is going, and, if you ask me, I’ll tell you. I am going to become——”

“Yes, yes.” Violet impatiently interrupted. “We’ve heard all that. You’re going to become a star. I know what kind too—a fallen star.”

A fresher smile bubbled about Aurelia’s delicious mouth.

“It pleases your ladyship to jest. I am to become the Princess Farnese!”

“Merciful heavens!” Violet exclaimed, turning as she spoke to Leilah. “She’ll go in to dinner before me!”

But Leilah who, after a word of greeting to Aurelia, had, from the table before her, taken and reopened the Paramitas, perhaps did not hear.

Violet turned again to her sister. “When did he propose?”

With an air of amused contempt, again Aurelia looked her up and down.

“How antiquated you are! Don’t you know that all that sort of thing has gone out?”

“Do you mean that he didn’t propose?”

“Of course not. I proposed to him.”

“What?”

“He was so coy about it, too,” Aurelia, quite as though she were eating sweetmeats, resumed. “He asked me all about my finances, what settlements I would make and whether I would object if he kept a separate establishment. You can’t really fancy how coy he was. He quite blushed and stammered, the poor thing.”

“I should think he might.”

“Yes, indeed. He asked me if I had spoken to his mamma, and I told him that while it was perhaps incorrect of me to speak to him in the first instance, yet that there could be no real love without a mutual misunderstanding, and now that we had one I would make a formal demand of the old lady to-day.”

Aurelia, executing a little pas, added: “I have just seen her.”

“Well?”

“She said: ‘And so you want my little boy for your husband.’ Partly that I told her, but partly also I want you for mother-in-law. You should have seen her lick her chops over that. Then she asked me about my affections. I told her they were just like the fashions. They came and went.”

“She must have been delighted.”

“She hugged me. Then, of course, I asked about him. She told me that he has just been named as co-respondent in the Kincardine divorce suit, and I said that that was perfectly satisfactory.”

“What!”

“Perfectly satisfactory. It appears that the poor boy can’t remember whether the charge is true or false and that I think is so dear of him.”

Violet, rising, extended her arms. “Aurelia, I have been wrong, I have misjudged you. Come to me.”

But Aurelia, moving back, waved her away. “You’ll only muss me. Now I must run. I must break the news to Parsnips. Will you come, Vi?”

“In a moment.” Violet answered. “Wait for me in the brougham. There is something I want to say to Leilah.”

Endearingly the ingÉnue smiled. “Something I ought not to hear, I suppose.” In speaking she made for the door. “The amount of things I ought not to hear and do hear is simply amazing.”

As the portiÈres fell on her gracile back, Violet, with a gesture which, for so warlike a lady, resembled defeat, reseating herself, exclaimed:

“Frankly, she is impossible.”

At once though, buckling anew for the fray, she aimed at Leilah and fired.

“So are you.”

Leilah, who had been considering the Paramitas, started at the attack which instantly was followed up by another.

“Do you know anything about the code here, the law code, I mean. Do you?”

Leilah, a bit bewildered, shook her head. “No, that is, very little.”

Violet’s eyes fairly snapped. “I congratulate you. A little is sometimes a great deal. I also know a little and that little is, well, immense, so enormous even that because of it I am in a position to tell you that if you go with Verplank, Barouffski can, if he catches you, have you jailed.”

Gravely, with curious calm, Leilah looked at her.

Annoyed that the shot had fallen short, Violet aimed again.

“Didn’t you hear me? I said jailed. J-a-i-l-e-d! Now I may add for two years. That is what I meant when you spoke of your prison. I agreed with you that it must be dreadful to be in one. I said I daresay it is even worse than you think.”

Leilah half raised a hand. “But——”

Unheedingly Violet continued. “Now, as for Verplank, if Barouffski were to surprise him here with you he could kill you both, yes, and be acquitted. But you—I have told you what he can do. Moreover, if he so much as suspects you, he can call the police. But excuse me. You were saying?”

“Nothing of any moment.”

But Violet persisted. “What was it?”

“Merely that during the Terror a woman went to the guillotine smelling a rose.”

At this flank movement Violet winced, but she rallied.

“Yes and rehearsed the act beforehand. They all did. The great ladies of the period rehearsed for the guillotine that they might die, as they had lived, with grace. Those were the good old days. These are the bad new ones. Anything of the kind would be ridiculous now.”

To this, gravely as before, Leilah assented. “No doubt. But aren’t you rather rambling about the grounds? It seems to me that you also have something up your sleeve.”

Violet rose to the challenge. “Something! I have the entire pharmacopoeia. In it is a remedy heroic but sovereign. If you’ll take it, it may maim but it will cure.”

Leilah, well entrenched, braved her. “I may not need it.”

With a rush, then, the attack began.

“That’s because you don’t know. You think you are sane and sound. Don’t you now? Yes, and you are neither. You have a high temperature complicated with nausea. The temperature is due to exposure, the nausea to indigestion. You have been exposed to Verplank and you have supped on Barouffski. You fancy you can’t be rid of the incubus. That is an hallucination which the fever has caused. You can be rid of it. You can throw it up. I have an emetic that will do the trick. It may not be tasty but I’ll warrant it will make him gag far more than you.”

At the ferocity of the assault, Leilah quailed. “Really, Violet, your language——”

But the lady was not to be denied. “Aha! You want me to be butter-fingered, don’t you? Not a bit of it. You shall have the dose whether you like it or not and here it is for you. You called this place a prison. Now who runs it? You do. And on what? Your money. Supposing you hadn’t any? Would Barouffski supply it? He would pack in a jiffy. Couldn’t you then sue for divorce? Of course you could. Then there is the emetic. Verplank has enough for you both, enough for an army. All you have to do is to hold your nose, open your mouth, give your money away and vomit Barouffski. Will you?”

It was Violet’s last shot. With it she had expected to bowl Leilah completely over. Anxiously she looked to see the result.

“Will you?” she repeated.

With manifest exaltation Leilah answered: “I had thought of it.”

Surprisedly Violet stared, wondering could all her ammunition have gone for nothing, wondering too at the almost rapt expression that had come into Leilah’s face.

“What?”

“Yes, Violet, I had thought of it—and of other things also. While Aurelia was here, I was reading a little book. It told me what I once knew and had since forgotten. It told me that if we have ideals we should live for them, that it is only by living for them and suffering for them that we can lift ourselves above the brutes. Violet, it was sinful of me to think of going with Gulian.”

Dispassionately the now mollified lady toned that phrase.

“It was not perhaps quite nice.”

“But I had not seen,” Leilah continued. “No, not that,” she interrupted herself to explain. “I had forgotten that this prison, all I have endured, all I shall endure, these are my debts to the Lords of Karma.”

But that was a bit too strong. Violet laughed.

“You mean the Lords of Gammon.”

“I mean,” Leilah, with heightening fervour, replied, “that I have looked upon my prison as a cross. It is not a cross, it is a boon—one of which I have not been worthy. For I forgot that any sorrow should be welcomed. I forgot that it has been sent to make us nobler than we are. But my sorrows I have not welcomed. I have rebelled against them. I shall rebel no more. They were my masters. They shall be my servants now.”

At these fine sentiments Violet sniffed.

“If that is theosophy I will believe in it when I am old, fat and a German. But I am glad it enabled you to reach a decision. Otherwise——”

But what the lady may have intended to say was never expressed or at least not then. Through the yellow portiÈres, the delicate oval of Aurelia’s face appeared.

“Aren’t you ever coming?” she called. “What have you two been talking about?”

As the ingÉnue spoke, she entered, strolled to the mirror, considered herself.

“We have been discussing your engagement,” Violet, in a very matter of fact way, replied.

Aurelia adjusted her hat, patted her hair, and addressed the mirror.

“I fancied it must be something important. Did I tell you what happened before I took Farnese?”

Violet yawned. “I have forgotten.”

Aurelia, still pluming herself, smiled.

“Then I didn’t. Besides, it is so shocking.”

Violet motioned at her. “Don’t be tiresome. I may have lost the ability to be shocked but not the ability to be bored.”

With an air of great satisfaction Aurelia turned.

“Well, this morning, d’Arcy called. He told me about the gayeties last evening and it seemed to me that he must have looked so sweet with the champagne all over him that I could hardly resist accepting him, too.”

“Accepting him, three!” Violet exclaimed. She raised her eyes as though calling heaven to witness. “There’s constancy for you!”

Aurelia gave another glance at her enticing self.

“Do you know, I have always thought that constancy must be due either to a lack of imagination or else of opportunity. That is what you would call a moral standpoint, isn’t it? Though what morality itself is you never deigned to explain. Personally I am inclined to think that it must be a preference in a choice of experiences.”

Violet stood up. “One might suppose you thought it consisted in being engaged to half a dozen men at the same time.”

Enthusiastically the girl regarded her. “There! That’s it! You’ve struck it! There is safety in numbers and what a moral young person I am!”

Violet nodded. “I never suspected it before.”

“Nor I,” Aurelia contentedly replied. She looked at Leilah. “By-by.”

“Good-by,” Violet added.

In a moment both had gone and Leilah, again alone, reopened the little treatise on the Paramitas.

The way was now clear and to that way the pamphlet had pointed. It had done more. It had brought the exaltation which such beatitudes do bring to those in great distress. But though it had exalted, suddenly the fervour fell from her, for at once she foresaw the scene which she would have with Verplank, when now, at the last moment, she had to tell him that she could not go. The terror of it daunted her. She could see him, demanding that she tell him why—that faltering why of hers which would be gibberish to him and yet which summarised her ideals.

For the moment she felt that she lacked the strength for this, that it would be better to write him and she was thinking what she would say and how she would say it, when something external, a noise from without, distracted her.

She stood up and went to the window, from which, since the day of the ambuscade, she had had no heart to look.

Below, a footman in a canary coat and black knee-breeches was walking, bareheaded, straight on. At the gate he stopped, fumbled with the latch, drew back the door, held it open.

A man entered. Tall and broad-shouldered, he had a rigid face, calm eyes, the air of a judge. His beard, intensely black, the beard of a Saracen, was close cut and pointed. He was dressed in black.

Another man followed. Shorter, fairer, distinctly fat, he had a box under his arm. About the box were broad bands, sealed with red wax.

A third man appeared. Older than the others, he had gray hair, glasses rimmed with tortoise-shell, and a bag.

All three were in black, all were grave, all were silent, and as they stood before the gate they partially concealed a fourth man, who, in black also, wore white gloves.

What they had come for Leilah could not imagine. Then, at once, she recalled what Violet had said: the rigors of French justice, a husband’s ability to cage an erring wife, to put her away, indefinitely, among the demented and the depraved, and at the sight of these men, at the thought of the Byzantine abysses of Barouffski’s nature, abysses perhaps unsounded yet, dread shook her. She shuddered.

But now another procession appeared, one that issued not from the gate, but from the house, a procession also composed of four men, also grave, also silent. One of them she vaguely recalled, and her stumbling memory tried to put a name on him, Dal, Mal, Pal-Palencia! Another, too, she remembered, Tyszkiewicz. A third also, and, to her cost, she knew. It was Barouffski.

In the first procession there was now a fourth acquaintance. The man with white gloves was raising his hat. As he did so she recognised d’Arcy. Then at last she understood, and, lest they should see her, drew back.

Meanwhile the footman had disappeared. From the first procession the man with the umbrella and the man with the box detached themselves. From the second, Palencia and Tyszkiewicz advanced.

For a little, grouped together, they conversed inaudibly, but amply with gestures and movements that included the tossing of a coin.

A pantomime followed. Tyszkiewicz, Palencia and the fat man moved to one side. The man with the umbrella drew with the ferule of it a line on the ground. Then, his head bent, one foot put directly in front of the other, he walked slowly until he had covered a space equal apparently to about fifteen yards. There he drew a second line, straightened himself, turned to Barouffski, who went to that line, while d’Arcy stationed himself at the other.

Immediately the fat man handed his box to Palencia. Palencia looked at the seals, broke them, opened the box, and, going to where d’Arcy stood, presented it. D’Arcy removed a glove, removed his hat, which he put brim upward beside him, and taking a pistol from the box, pointed it at the ground.

Palencia went back, restored the box to the fat man, who presented it to Barouffski. Another pistol was extracted. The fat man moved to one side. The man with the umbrella placed himself at an angle to d’Arcy and Barouffski. In front of him, at an equal angle, Palencia, Tyszkiewicz and the fat man stood. These the old man with the bag and the fourth member of the Barouffski party joined. The man with the umbrella took out a watch, and held it open in his hand.

“Attention!”

The pantomime had ended. Leilah leaned forward. Of Barouffski she could see now but the back of his head, the back of his tight-fitting coat. But d’Arcy, who stood sideways, his heels drawn together, might have been posing for a photograph.

The sky was leaden. The shrubbery resembled it. From behind an urn a cat appeared. It meowed and vanished. For a moment more there was silence.

The man with the umbrella looked from d’Arcy to Barouffski.

“Messieurs, after I give the command Fire, I will count from one to ten, leaving between each number an interval of ten seconds. It is unnecessary, but it is my duty to add, that to fire before I have given the word, or after I have counted ten, constitutes attempted assassination and, should death ensue, murder.”

He paused, looked at his watch, looked at d’Arcy, again at Barouffski.

“Fire!”

Simultaneously the two men raised and extended their right arms, d’Arcy in such a manner that the forearm and butt of the pistol masked the abnormal beauty of his face. The hand was bare, but the left, which hung at his side, was gloved.

“One! Two! Three!”

With the ridiculous noise of a firecracker a pistol went off. D’Arcy, lowering his right hand, raised and shook the left. The delicate material of the glove had reddened, and on the ground specks of crimson dropped.

“Four! Five!”

D’Arcy’s left hand fell back. He raised the right.

“Six! Seven! Eight!”

Measuredly, monotonously, but more loudly than before, the final numbers were being called. Infinitesimally the point of d’Arcy’s pistol moved. His heels were no longer drawn together. His right hand was held less high. His left hand burned. Otherwise he was entirely at his ease.

He had withstood Barouffski’s fire. It was Barouffski’s turn to withstand his. He had time and to spare. Slowly, coolly, deliberately, he was taking aim.

It was very agreeable. He was smiling. He was enjoying himself. He was enjoying Barouffski’s presumable suspense. He was savouring his equally presumable agitations. The man’s face had turned ashen. The fact that it had, that he could see it had, delighted him. He felt sure of himself, and his thoughts were pleasant.

He was thinking: “That glass of wine of yours was the last you will ever ask me or any one else to drink.”

He had become aware of Leilah’s presence. That, too, delighted him. If he had a regret, it was that Tempest, the Silverstairs, all the demi-mondaines and exotics of the night before, the Bohemians to boot, the waiters as well, were not present also. Though in appearance divine, at heart he was human.

Again, imperceptibly, the point of his pistol moved.

“Nine!”

The trigger had been pulled. There was a fresh detonation. D’Arcy handed his pistol to the fat man, bent over, took up his hat, put it on, took it off, raised it straight upward, and for a moment, before replacing it, held it high in the air.

Leilah, without noticing the salute which was intended for her, saw Barouffski turn completely around, sink on his knees, press his hands to his side, and pitch forward.

It was a feint, she thought, histrionics for the gallery, perhaps for her. But now the old man and his colleague were bending over him. Behind them, Palencia, Tyszkiewicz and the man with the umbrella leaned. Barouffski’s coat and waistcoat were opened, his shirt was torn apart.

Leilah heard what to her was the meaninglessness of technical terms. She saw the men who had been bending arise. She saw the others remove their hats. At the significant action she saw that the garden had been again invaded, this time by Death.

She turned, clutching for support at the velvet of a curtain, overwhelmed at the knowledge that her prison had crumbled, that the jailer was gone.

It had been her destiny to have sorrow spring into her life, fell her, make her its own, and to what end? Tearfully she had put that query to walls as callous as fate. Tearfully she had come to believe that she was damned in this existence for sins committed in another. It is this life that is hell she had told herself. But now, abruptly, the malediction was lifted. Still in hell, she was at the portals, the gates were open, she was free!

Yet was she? At the moment it seemed to her that it was all a hallucination; that, if she looked again into the accursed garden, she would see Barouffski tapping his breast with one hand, pointing to some prostrate form with the other, and, with his ambiguous smile, calling to her:

“See, my dear, I, I am unharmed.”

So poignant was the impression that she did look. A litter had been improvised, and on it Barouffski, an arm pendent, his head fallen back, his face a gray green, was being put.

On the door behind her sounded the muffled tap of fingers furtive and discreet. She turned. At the threshold was Parker.

“If you please, my lady. Will your ladyship receive——”

“No,” Leilah answered. She was about to add that she was at home to no one. But she caught herself. “Who is it?”

With that air which those acquire who attend to delicate matters, the woman answered: “Mr. Verplank.”

Leilah drew a long breath. She went to the mirror. The curtain had disarranged her hair. She readjusted it, and passed out and down into the slippery salon.

Verplank was leaning against the piano. His left arm was in a sling, and the left side of his face from the nose to the ear was bandaged.

Before either could speak there came from the hall a murmur of voices, the sound of lumbering feet, the noise of people labouring upward.

Verplank looked at Leilah, and from her to the door.

“What is that?”

On and upward moved the steps, the noise decreasing as they passed, the sound subsiding with them.

“What is it?” Verplank asked again.

Leilah’s under lip trembled. The deliverance from the vortex, the after-shudder that comes when some great peril has been barely escaped, the sensation of strength overtaxed, these things fusing with the consciousness that the last barricade had been taken, that there were now no more hostages to joy, induced in her one of the most curious of physical phenomena.

With tears running down her cheeks, she smiled. Then, sobbing and smiling still, she answered him:

“The key of the prison.”

Verplank nodded. He did not in the least understand. But the singularity of her appearance, joined to the singularity of her reply, aroused in him a great pity for this woman who had ruined her life, ruined his own, and who then seemed to him demented.

“Pardon, madame la comtesse. Monsieur Palencia and Monsieur Tyszkiewicz ask if madame la comtesse will receive them?”

At the door, behind her, was Emmanuel.

At once another phenomenon occurred. Galvanised by that instinct of form which, when requisite, enables women of the world to banish instantly any trace of emotion, Leilah turned to the footman a face in which the tears had been reabsorbed, and from which the smile had gone.

“Say to these gentlemen that I appreciate and thank them, but that I can see no one.”

Emmanuel compressed his lips. He wondered how she knew. There was a great deal occurring in this house that perplexed him. Moreover, Verplank’s bandage and sling interested him very much. But, trained to his calling, he bowed and withdrew.

“What do they want?” Verplank asked, memories of his own duel surging at mention of their names before him.

In Leilah’s face the tears and smiles reappearing, mingled.

“Barouffski is dead,” she answered.

Verplank closed and opened a hand. His mouth opened also. He was sure now that she was crazy.

“Dead! How? What do you mean?”

Leilah made a gesture.

“There, a moment ago, in the garden. D’Arcy shot him.”

Verplank started. The definiteness of her reply divested him of his idea concerning her, but it produced another which was also, though differently, disturbing. His eyes blazed. The old scar, the scar on the right side of his face, reddened.

“Who the devil is d’Arcy?”

For a moment he stared. Then, angrily snapping two fingers, he cried:

“In taking you from this damned house to-day, I had intended to leave a card for him, not a p. p. c. either, one with our address on it and the hours when I would be at home. If there was any shooting going on, I intended to be in it. Now some duffer must interfere.”

With a rapid intake of the breath, he considered her. At the moment, he doubted it could be true. Yet her face, with its hysterical blending of joy and sorrow, seemed to certify that it was so. After all, he reflected, however the odour may occur, always the smell of an enemy’s corpse is sweet. But, uncertain still, he threw out for clincher:

“Is that what you meant by the key of the prison?”

She moved to him.

“Gulian, yes, and never can I be thankful enough that it was not your hand that turned it.”

Verplank tossed his bandaged head.

“So this is the end!”

Leilah looked up at him.

“Gulian, no, not that. The end of the beginning, if you like. Hereafter we will be beginning anew. Hereafter——”

She paused. The word had been evocative. Its repetition showed her that which she had not yet had time to consider; the decencies of life, the decencies, too, of death, the funeral, the widow’s weeds, the delay which the world exacts; new hostages to joy, real though impermanent.

She told him of them.

From the church next door the organ pealed, and as they then remade their plans—those plans which mortals think they make, and which always are unmade unless intended for them—a ray of sunshine entered; the organ pealed louder, the beauty of the melody hushed their voices, and for a moment, to the appoggiatura of Stradella, on that shaft of light, Leilah’s thoughts, ascending, mounted into realms where all things broken are made complete, and where are found again things vanished.