But, humiliated as she was, the predominant feeling in her mind was astonishment. Could it be true that she was a prig? Was that the final definition of the pride and the strength in which she had gloried until now? Was that all that people meant when they told her she was not like other girls? It was an odious revelation, and for the moment her self-respect was stunned by it. She had boasted of her success; and to be successful was merely to be priggish. She had been proud of her virtue; and virtue, again, was only an equivalent for priggishness. She wondered vaguely whether there was a single aspiration left that did not lead to the paths of priggishness. A prig! He had called her a prig! She had thought it such a fine thing to be content with his friendship, and this was the end of it all. All the wretchedness of her solitary drive home was centred in those last cruel words of his; all the bitterness of that long, miserable Sunday was concentrated in that covert insult. She could have borne his indifference, or even his displeasure; but she could have killed him for his contempt.

And Ted? She did not give a thought to Ted. Even the reason for his curious behaviour had not fully dawned upon her yet. It had only seemed in keeping with the rest of her misfortunes, just like the rain, which she allowed to beat in upon her, with a kind of reckless satisfaction. In the fulness of her more absorbing personal trouble, Ted would have to wait. It had been her experience that Ted always could wait. It was not until she stood once more within the familiar hall of number ten, Queen's Crescent, that the recollection of Ted's astonished look returned to her mind; and then she put it hastily away from her, as something that would have to be faced presently.

As she walked into her room, too weary to think any more, and longing for the temporary oblivion of a night's rest, the first thing that met her eye was the unmade condition of her bed. The desolate look of the tiny compartment was the crowning point of her day of woe; and the tears, which she had kept back until now, rushed to her eyes. It seemed a little hard that, on this day of all others, Phyllis should have neglected to make her bed. She gave it an impatient push, and it scraped loudly over the bare boards.

"Stop that row!" said Polly's sharp voice from the other end of the room. "You might be quiet, now you have come in."

"Is Phyllis asleep?" asked Katharine shortly.

"Can't you be quiet?" growled Polly. "Haven't you heard she is worse? Don't see how you should, though,—coming in at this hour of the night!"

"Worse?" With an effort, Katharine's thoughts travelled back over the absorbing events of the day, to the early morning; and she remembered that Phyllis had stayed in bed with a headache. "What is the matter with her?" she asked, faintly. Everything seemed to be conspiring against her happiness to-day.

"Influenza. A lot you care! Nothing but my cousin's funeral would have taken me out to-day, I know. I had to show up for that. Of course, I thought you would look after her; I asked you to."

Katharine had pushed aside the curtain, and was looking at the flushed, unconscious face of her friend. She dimly remembered saying she would stop with her; and then a letter had come from Paul, asking her to meet him in the park, and she had thought no more of Phyllis. She had not even succeeded in meeting him; and again her eyes filled with tears at her own misfortunes.

"I couldn't help it," she said, miserably. "How was I to know she was so bad? Have you taken her temperature?"

"Hundred and three, when I last took it. It's no use standing there and pulling a long face. She doesn't know you; so it's rather late in the day to be cut up. You'd better go to bed, I should say; you look as though you'd been out all day, and half the night, too!"

She ended with a contemptuous sniff. Katharine rubbed the tears out of her eyes. The weariness had temporarily left her.

"Let me sit up with her," she said.

"You? What could you do? Why, you'd fall asleep, or think of something else in the middle, and she might die for all you cared," returned Polly contemptuously. "Can you make a poultice?"

Katharine shook her head dumbly, and crept away. Her self-abasement seemed complete. She lay down on her untidy bed, and drew the clothes over her, and gave way to her grief. There did not seem a bright spot in her existence, now that Phyllis was not able to comfort her. She hoped, with a desperate fervour, that she would catch influenza too, and die, so that remorse should consume the hearts of all those who had so cruelly misunderstood her.

A hand shook her by the shoulder, not unkindly.

"Look here! you must stop that row, or else you will disturb her. What's the good of it? Besides, she isn't as bad as all that either; you can't have seen much illness, I'm thinking."

"It isn't that," gasped Katharine truthfully. "At least, not entirely. I was dreadfully unhappy about something else, and I wanted to die; and then, when I found Phyllis was ill, it all seemed so hopeless. I didn't mean to disturb any one; it was dreadfully foolish of me; I haven't cried for years."

Polly gave a kind of grunt, and sat down on the bed. It was more or less interesting to have reduced the brilliant Miss Austen to this state of submission.

"Got yourself into trouble?" she asked, and refrained from adding that she had expected it all along.

Katharine began to cry again. There was so little sympathy, and so much curiosity, in the curt question. But she had reached the point when to confide in some one was an absolute necessity; and there was no one else.

"I haven't done anything wrong," she sobbed. "Why should one suffer so awfully, just because one didn't know! We were only friends, and it was so pleasant, and I was so happy! It might have gone on for ever, only there was another girl."

"Of course," said Polly. "There always is. How did she get hold of him?"

Katharine shrank back into herself.

"You don't understand," she complained. "He isn't like that at all. He is clever, and refined, and very reserved. He doesn't flirt a bit, or anything of that sort."

"Oh, I see," said Polly, with her expressive sniff. "I suppose the other girl thought herself a toff, eh?"

"She is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen," said Katharine simply. "But I never knew he cared about that. He had views against marriage, he always said; and he wasn't always talking about women, like some men. I did not think he would end in marrying, just like every one else."

"More innocent you, then! I always said you ought to have stopped at home; girls like you generally do come the worst cropper. You surely didn't suppose he would go on for ever, and be content merely with your friendship, did you?"

"Yes, I did," said Katharine wearily. "Why not? I was content with his."

Polly gave vent to a stifled laugh.

"My dear, you're not a man," she said in a superior tone. It added considerably to the piquancy of the conversation that the subject was one on which she was a greater authority than her clever companion.

"But he really cared for me, I am certain he did," Katharine went on plaintively; and her eyes filled with tears again.

"Then why is he marrying the other girl instead of you? If she is so beautiful, you're surely very good-looking too, eh? That won't wash anyhow, will it?"

Katharine was silent. She felt she could not reveal the full extent of his infamy just then; there was something so particularly sordid in having been weighed against the advantages of a worldly marriage and found wanting; and she felt a sudden disinclination to expose the whole of the truth to the sharp criticism of Polly Newland.

"I haven't done anything wrong," she said again. "I don't understand why things are so unfairly arranged. Why should I suffer for it like this?"

"Don't know about that," retorted the uncompromising Polly. "I expect you've been foolish, and that's a worse game than being bad. Going about town with a man after dark, when you're not engaged to him, isn't considered respectable by most, even if it's always the same man. I'm not so particular as some, but you must draw the line somewhere."

"I didn't go about with him much," said Katharine, making a feeble attempt to justify herself. "He didn't care about it; he was always so particular not to give people anything to talk about. He didn't care for himself, he said; it was only for me. So I used to go to his chambers instead. I couldn't be more careful than that, could I? And I should have gone in the daytime, if I had had more time; but there was all my work to get through,—so what else could I do? There wasn't any harm in it."

She could not see her companion's face, and was so full of her own reflections that she failed to notice her silence. Polly did not even sniff.

"Then there's Ted," Katharine continued presently. "Even Ted was strange to-night; and Ted has never been like that to me before. I can't think what has come over everybody. What have I done to deserve it all?"

"Mercy me!" cried Polly suddenly. "Is there another of them? Who on earth is Ted?"

"Ted? Why, you must have seen him in the hall sometimes; he often comes to take me out. I have known him all my life; he is only a little older than I am, and I am devoted to him. I would not quarrel with Ted for anything in the whole world; it would be like quarrelling with myself. And to-night I ran into him, just as I came out of—of the other one's chambers; and I was so glad to see him, because Ted is always so sweet to me when I am in trouble; and—and Ted was quite funny, and he wouldn't speak to me at all, and he just put me into a hansom and left me to come home alone. I can't think why he behaved so oddly. I know he used not to get on with—with the other one, and that is why I never told him I had met him again up here in London; and I suppose he caught sight of him to-night in the doorway,—there was a lamp just above,—but still, he need not have been hurt until he had heard my explanation, need he? Why has every one turned against me at once?"

Polly remained silent no longer. She turned and stared at the prostrate figure on the bed, with all the power of her small, watery blue eyes.

"I really think you beat everything I ever knew," she exclaimed.

"What?" said Katharine, who had turned her face to the wall, and was occupied in meditating miserably on the problem of her existence. "What do you mean?"

Polly lost all control over herself.

"Do you mean to tell me that you never saw any harm in all this?" she cried emphatically. "Do you really mean to say that you have been carrying on anyhow with two men at once, going to their chambers late at night, and letting yourself be seen in public with them, without knowing that it was unusual? Didn't you ever see the danger in it? You are either the biggest fool in creation or the biggest humbug! One man at a time would be bad enough; but two! My eye!"

"But—there wasn't any harm," pleaded Katharine. "Why does no one understand? It seemed quite natural to me. They were so different, and I liked them in such opposite ways, don't you see? I have known Ted all my life; he is a dear boy, and that is all. But Paul is clever and strong; he is a man, and he knows about things. And I never knew it was wrong; I didn't feel wicked, somehow. I wonder if that was what Paul was thinking, when he said I was a prig? Oh, dear! oh, dear! I have never been so wretched in my whole life!"

"Did he say that about you? Well, I don't wonder."

Katharine looked hopelessly at her unsympathetic profile, with the snub nose and the small chin, and the hair twisted up into tight plaits and the ends tied with white tape; and her eyes wandered down the red flannel dressing-gown to the large slippered feet that emerged from beneath it.

"You called me a prig, too," she said, humbly. "I overheard you."

"I thought so then," said Polly gruffly.

"Do you think so now? Is it true? Am I a prig?" She awaited the answer anxiously. Polly gave her another pitiless stare.

"I'm bothered if I know," she said. "But if you're not, you ought to be in the nursery. Only don't go telling people the things you've been telling me to-night, or you might get yourself into worse trouble. You'd better go to sleep now, and leave it till to-morrow. My conscience! you'd make some people sit up, you would!"

Katharine felt she had endured as much contempt as she could bear that evening; but she made a last attempt to recover some of her self-respect.

"I wish you would tell me why it is wrong to do things that are not really wrong in themselves, just because people say they are wrong?" she asked, rather sleepily.

"Because people can make it so jolly unpleasant for you if you don't agree with them," said Polly bluntly. "And if you fancy you're going to alter all that, you must make up your mind to be called a prig. You can't have a good time and defy convention as you've been doing, and then expect to get off scot free without being called a prig; it isn't likely. Most people are content to take things as they are; it's a jolly sight more comfortable, and it's good enough for them. Good-night."

"I sha'n't sleep," Katharine called after her. And Polly sniffed.

And the next thing that Katharine remembered was being awakened by her in the early morning, and told in a gruff voice that she might sit with Phyllis if she liked, until some one came to relieve her.

"All right," she replied, drowsily. "How tired you look; didn't you sleep well?"

"Sleep? There wasn't much chance of that, when she was talking gibberish all the time. She's quieter now, and you can fetch Jenny if you want anything. I must be off; I shall be late as it is. Just like my luck to get my early week when she is ill!"

And there by the bedside of Phyllis Hyam, before any one else in the house was astir, Katharine sat and pondered again over the events of the day before. They seemed just as tragic as ever, separated as they were from her by a few hours of forgetfulness; and she wondered miserably how she was going to take up her life as usual, and go about her work as though nothing had happened. "That is why it is so hard to be a woman," she murmured, full of pity for her own troubles. And yet, when Miss Jennings came and took her post in the sick-room, and she was free to go to school, she found that it was a relief to be compelled to do something, and her work seemed easier to her than she had ever found it before. She had never given a better lecture than she gave that morning; and something that was outside herself seemed to come to her assistance all day, and remained with her until her work was done. But when she returned home in the evening, the full significance of her unfortunate situation stared her again in the face; and the news that Phyllis was worse and was not allowed to see any one was so in keeping with her feelings, that she felt unable even to make a comment upon it.

"I always said that Miss Austen hadn't a spark of feeling in her," observed the girl who had given her the information; and Katharine overheard her, and began to wonder mechanically if it were true. Every faculty she possessed seemed deadened at that moment; she had no longer the inclination even to rebel against her fate. She sat on the stairs, outside the bedroom she was not allowed to enter, and took a strange delicious pleasure in dwelling upon the whole of her intercourse with Paul. There was not a conversation or a chance meeting with him, that she did not go through in her mind with a scrupulous accuracy; the pain of it became almost unendurable at moments, and yet it was an exquisite torture that brought her some measure of relief. She even forced herself to recall her last meeting with him, and was surprised in an apathetic sort of way when she found that she did not want to cry any more.

And from thinking of Paul, she naturally fell to thinking of Ted too. And it slowly dawned upon her, as she considered it in the light of her present mood, that what Polly had said in her vulgar, uncompromising manner, was the truth. For a whole year she had been living in a false atmosphere of contentment; she had deluded herself into the belief that she was superior to convention and human nature combined, and she had ended in proving herself a complete failure. Paul had seen through her self-righteousness, he had nothing but contempt for her, and he had found it a relief to turn from her to the human and faulty Marion Keeley. In the depths of her self-abasement, she had even ceased to feel angry with Marion.

And Ted had found her out. That was the worst of all. On the impulse of the moment, she fetched some paper and wrote to him at once, sitting there on the uncarpeted stairs, while the people passed up and down unheeded by her. It was a very humble letter, full of pleading confession and self-accusation,—such a letter as she had never sent him before, and written from a standpoint she had never yet been obliged to assume towards him. It was a relief at the moment to be doing something; but she regretted her action the whole of the following day, and hardly knew how to open his reply when she found it awaiting her, on her return home in the evening. It was very short.

"Dear Kitty," it ran:—

Don't mind about me. It's a rotten world, and I'm the rottenest fool in it. I was only hit up the other night because I was so surprised. Of course you're all right, and I ought never to have been born. I knew all the time that you were spoofing me when you pretended to care for me; but I didn't know you cared for any one else, least of all Wilton. He always seemed so played to me, but then I'm not clever. Only, I advise you not to go hanging round his chambers at night; people are so poor, and they might talk. Let me know if you want me or anything. I won't bother you otherwise.

Ted.