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at a function, my friend a very brilliant personage and Hester a little outsider. They found they both knew me—and knew me well, and my friend was exquisitely rude; so rude that she gave herself away. Hester confronted me with my infidelity and I didn’t lie to her. I couldn’t lie to Hester. We had gone down to Chartres for the week-end and we had a terrible scene there and she left me and I never heard of her again until the other night. By Heaven, you know—I was pretty well knocked out when I saw her appear there in the door between you and your son!’

Poor little Hester! So young! She flitted across Monica’s memory, a sombre slender figure in the black cloak lined with red, suspicious of all softness; the obscure girl who had endured exquisite rudeness at the hands of a brilliant rival. How clearly she could retrace the flaming of that passionate young heart. She sat and thought in silence, looking into the fire, while Ingpen, restlessly, walked up and down, and at last she questioned him again: ‘You must have known that it might come out at any moment, when you saw her here, married, happy, safe, with her husband and her child. Why didn’t you go at once? You knew we were the type of people who couldn’t accept it. How do you forgive