Kitty fell back in silence, staring at William. She loosened her mantle and threw it off, then she sat down in a chair near the wood fire, and bent over it, shivering.

"Of course you didn't mean that, William?" she said, at last.

Ashe turned.

"I should not have said it unless I had meant every word of it. It is, of course, the only thing to be done."

Kitty looked at him miserably. "But you can't mean that—that you'll resign because of that book?"

She pulled it towards her and turned over the pages with a hand that trembled. "That would be too foolish!"

Ashe made no reply. He was standing before the fire, with his hands in his pockets, and a face half absent, half ironical, as though his mind followed the sequences of a far distant future.

"William!" She caught the sleeve of his coat with a little cry. "I wrote that book because I thought it would help you."

His attention came back to her.

"Yes, Kitty, I believe you did."

She gulped down a sob. His tone was so odd, so remote.

"Many people have done such things. I know they have. Why—why, it was only meant—as a skit—to make people laugh! There's no harm in it, William."

Ashe, without speaking, took up the book and looked back at certain pages, which he seemed to have marked. Kitty's feeling as she watched him was the feeling of the condemned culprit, held dumb and strangled in the grip of his own sense of justice, and yet passionately conscious how much more he could say for himself than anybody is ever likely to say for him.

"When did you have the first idea of this book, Kitty?"

"About a year ago," she said, in a low voice.

"In October? At Haggart?"

Kitty nodded.

Ashe thought. Her admission took him back to the autumn weeks at Haggart, after the Cliffe crisis and the rearrangement of the ministry in the July of that year. He well remembered that those weeks had been weeks of special happiness for both of them. Afterwards, the winter had brought many renewed qualms and vexations. But in that period, between the storms of the session and Kitty's escapades in the hunting-field, memory recalled a tender, melting time—a time rich in hidden and exquisite hours, when with Kitty on his breast, lip to lip and heart to heart, he had reaped, as it seemed to him, the fruits of that indulgence which, as he knew, his mother scorned. And at that very moment, behind his back, out of his sight, she had begun this atrocious thing.

He looked at her again—the bitterness almost at his lips, almost beyond his control.

"I wish I knew what could have been your possible object in writing it?"

She sat up and confronted him. The color flamed back again into her pale cheeks.

"You know I told you—when we had that talk in London—that I wanted to write. I thought it would be good for me—would take my thoughts off—well, what had happened. And I began to write this—and it amused me to find I could do it—and I suppose I got carried away. I loved describing you, and glorifying you—and I loved making caricatures of Lady Parham—and all the people I hated. I used to work at it whenever you were away—or I was dull and there was nothing to do.

"Did it never occur to you," said Ashe, interrupting, "that it might get you—get us both—into trouble, and that you ought to tell me?"

She wavered.

"No!" she said, at last. "I never did mean to tell you, while I was writing it. You know I don't tell lies, William! The real fact is, I was afraid you'd stop it."

"Good God!" He threw up his hands with a sound of amazement, then thrust them again into his pockets and began to pace up and down.

"But then"—she resumed—"I thought you'd soon get over it, and that it was funny—and everybody would laugh—and you'd laugh—and there would be an end of it."

He turned and stared at her. "Frankly, Kitty—I don't understand what you can be made of! You imagined that that sketch of Lord Parham"—he struck the open page—"a sketch written by my wife, describing my official chief—when he was my guest—under my own roof—with all sorts of details of the most intimate and offensive kind—mocking his speech—his manners—his little personal ways—charging him with being the corrupt tool of Lady Parham, disloyal to his colleagues, a man not to be trusted—and justifying all this by a sort of evidence that you could only have got as my wife and Lord Parham's hostess—you actually supposed that you could write and publish that!—without in the first place its being plain to every Tom, Dick, and Harry that you had written it—and in the next, without making it impossible for your husband to remain a colleague of the man you had treated in such a way? Kitty!—you are not a stupid woman! Do you really mean to say that you could write and publish this book without knowing that you were doing a wrong action—which, so far from serving me, could only damage my career irreparably? Did nothing—did no one warn you—if you were determined to keep such a secret from your husband, whom it most concerned?"

He had come to stand beside her, both hands on the back of a chair—stooping forward to emphasize his words—the lines of his fine face and noble brow contracted by anger and pain.

"Mr. Darrell warned me," said Kitty, in a low voice, as though those imperious eyes compelled the truth from her—"but of course I didn't believe him."

"Darrell!" cried Ashe, in amazement—"Darrell! You confided in him?"

"I told him all about it. It was he who took it to a publisher."

"Hound!" said Ashe, between his teeth. "So that was his revenge."

"Oh, you needn't blame him too much," said Kitty, proudly, not understanding the remark. "He wrote to me not long ago to say it was horribly unwise—and that he washed his hands of it."

"Ay—when he'd done the deed! When did you show it him?" said Ashe, impetuously.

"At Haggart—in August."

"Et tu, Brute!" said Ashe, turning away. "Well, that's done with. Now the only thing to do is to face the music. I go home. Whatever can be done to withdraw the book from circulation I shall, of course, do; but I gather from this precious letter"—he held up the note which had been enclosed in the parcel—"that some thousands of copies have already been ordered by the booksellers, and a few distributed to 'persons in high places.'"

"William," she said, in despair, catching his arm again—"listen! I offered the man two hundred pounds only yesterday to stop it."

Ashe laughed.

"What did he reply?"

"He said it was impossible. Fifty copies had been already issued."

"The review copies, no doubt. By next week there will be, I should say, five thousand in the shops. Your man understands his business, Kitty. This is the kind of puff preliminary he has been scattering about."

And with sparkling eyes he handed to her a printed slip containing an outline of the book for the information of the booksellers.

It drew attention to the extraordinary interest of the production as a painting of the upper class by the hand of one belonging to its inmost circle. "People of the highest social and political importance will be recognized at once; the writer handles cabinet ministers and their wives with equal freedom, and with a touch betraying the closest and most intimate knowledge. Details hitherto quite unknown to the public of ministerial combinations and intrigues—especially of the feminine influences involved—will be found here in their lightest and most amusing form. A certain famous fancy ball will be identified without difficulty. Scathing as some of the portraits are, the writer is by no means merely cynical. The central figure of the book is a young and rising statesman, whose aim and hopes are touched with a loving hand—the charm of the portrait being only equalled by the venom with which the writer assails those who have thwarted or injured his hero. But our advice is simply—'Buy and Read!' Conjecture will run wild about the writer. All we can say is that the most romantic or interesting surmise that can possibly be formed will fall far short of the reality."

"The beast is a shrewd beast!" said Ashe, as he raised himself from the stooping position in which he had been following the sentences over Kitty's shoulder. "He knows that the public will rush for his wares! How much money did he offer you, Kitty?"

He turned sharply on his heel to wait for her reply.

"A hundred pounds," said Kitty, almost inaudibly—"and a hundred more if five thousand sold." She had returned again to her crouching attitude over the fire.

"Generous!—upon my word!" said Ashe, scornfully turning over the two thick-leaved, loosely printed Mudie volumes. "A guinea to the public, I suppose—fifteen shillings to the trade. Darrell didn't exactly advise you to advantage, Kitty."

Kitty kept silence. The sarcastic violence of his tone fell on her like a blow. She seemed to shrink together; while Ashe resumed his walk to and fro.

Presently, however, she looked up, to ask, in a voice that tried for steadiness:

"What do you mean to do—exactly—William?"

"I shall, of course, buy up all I can; I shall employ some lawyer fellow, and appeal to the good feelings of the newspapers. There will be no trouble with the respectable ones. But some copies will get out, and some of the Opposition newspapers will make capital out of them. Naturally!—they'd be precious fools if they didn't."

A momentary hope sprang up in Kitty.

"But if you buy it up—and stop all the papers that matter," she faltered—"why should you resign, William? There won't be—such great harm done."

For answer he opened the book, and without speaking pointed to two passages—the first, an account full of point and malice of the negotiations between himself and Lord Parham at the time when he entered the cabinet, the conditions he himself had made, and the confidential comments of the Premier on the men and affairs of the moment.

"Do you remember the night when I told you those things, Kitty?"

Yes, Kitty remembered well. It was a night of intimate talk between man and wife, a night when she had shown him her sweetest, tenderest mood, and he—incorrigible optimist!—had persuaded himself that she was growing as wise as she was lovely.

Her lip trembled. Then he pointed to the second—to the pitiless picture of Lord Parham at Haggart.

"You wrote that—when he was under our roof—there by our pressing invitation! You couldn't have written it—unless he had so put himself in your power. A wandering Arab, Kitty, will do no harm to the man who has eaten and drunk in his tent!"

She looked up, and as she read his face she understood at last how what she had done had outraged in him all the natural and all the inherited instincts of a generous and fastidious nature. The "great gentleman," so strong in him as in all the best of English statesmen, whether they spring from the classes or the masses, was up in arms.

She sprang to her feet with a cry. "William, you can't give up politics! It would make you miserable."

"That can't be helped. And I couldn't go on like this, Kitty—even if this affair of the book could be patched up. The strain's too great."

They were but a yard apart, and yet she seemed to be looking at him across a gulf.

"You have been so happy in your work!" This time the sob escaped her.

"Oh, don't let's talk about that," he said, abruptly, as he walked away. "There'll be a certain relief in giving up the impossible. I'll go back to my books. We can travel, I suppose, and put politics out of our heads."

"But—you won't resign your seat?"

"No," he said, after a pause—"no. As far as I can see at present, I sha'n't resign my seat, though my constituents, of course, will be very sick. But I doubt whether I shall stand again."

Every phrase fell as though with a thud on Kitty's ear. It was the wreck of a man's life, and she had done it.

"Shall you—shall you go and see Lord Parham?" she asked, after a pause.

"I shall write to him first. I imagine"—he pointed to the letter lying on the table—"that creature has already sent him the book. Then later I daresay I shall see him."

She looked up.

"If I wrote and told him it was all my doing, William?—if I grovelled to him?"

"The responsibility is mine," he said, sternly. "I had no business to tell even you the things printed there. I told them at my own risk. If anything I say has any weight with you, Kitty, you will write nothing."

She spread out her hands to the fire again, and he heard her say, as though to herself:

"The thing is—the awful thing is, that I'm mad—I must be mad. I never thought of all this when I was writing it. I wrote it in a kind of dream. In the first place, I wanted to glorify you—"

He broke into an exclamation.

"Your taste, Kitty!—where was your taste? That a wife should praise a husband in public! You could only make us both laughing-stocks."

His handsome features quivered a little. He felt this part of it the most galling, the most humiliating of all; and she understood. In his eyes she had shown herself not only reckless and treacherous, but indelicate, vulgar, capable of besmirching the most sacred and intimate of relations.

She rose from her seat.

"I must go and take my things off," she said, in "a vague voice," and as she moved she tottered a little. He turned to look at her. Amid his own crushing sense of defeat and catastrophe, his natural and righteous indignation, he remembered that she had been ill—he remembered their child. But whether from the excitement, first of the meeting in the Vercelli palace, and now of this scene—or merely from the heat of the fire over which she had been hanging, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes blazed. Her beauty had never been more evident; but it made little appeal to him; it was the wild, ungovernable beauty from which he had suffered. He saw that she was excited, but there was an air also of returning physical vigor; and the nascent feeling which might have been strengthened by pallor and prostration died away.

Kitty moved as though to pass him and go to her room, which opened out of the salon. But as she neared him she suddenly caught him by the arm.

"William!—William! don't do it!—don't resign! Let me apologize!"

He was angered by her persistence, and merely said, coldly:

"I have given you my reasons, Kitty, why such a course is impossible."

"And—and you start to-morrow morning?"

"By the early train. Please let me go, Kitty. There are many things to arrange. I must order the gondola, and see if the people here can cash me a check."

"You mean—to leave me alone?" The words had a curious emphasis.

"I had a few words with Miss French before you came in. The packet arrived by the evening post, and seeing that it was books—for you—I opened it. After about an hour"—he turned and walked away again—"I saw my bearings. Then I called Miss French, told her I should have to go to-morrow, and asked her how long she could stay with you."

"William!" cried Kitty again, leaning heavily on the table beside her—"don't go!—don't leave me!"

His face darkened.

"So you would prevent me from taking the only honorable, the only decent way out of this thing that remains to me?"

She made no immediate reply. She stood—wrapped apparently in painful abstraction—a creature lovely and distraught. The masses of her fair hair loosened by the breeze on the canal had fallen about her cheeks and shoulders; her black hat framed the white brow and large, feverish eyes; and the sable cape she had worn in the gondola had slipped down over the thin, sloping shoulders, revealing the young figure and the slender waist. She might have been a child of seventeen, grieving over the death of her goldfinch.

Ashe gathered together his official letters and papers, found his check-book, and began to write. While he wrote he explained that Miss French could keep her company at least another fortnight, that he could leave with them four or five circular notes for immediate expenses, and would send more from home directly he arrived.

In the middle of his directions Kitty once more appealed to him in a passionate, muffled voice not to go. This time he lost his temper, and without answering her he hastily left the room to arrange his packing with his valet.

When he returned to the salon Kitty was not there. He and Miss French—who knew only that something tragic had happened in which Kitty was concerned—kept up a fragmentary conversation till dinner was announced and Kitty entered. She had evidently been weeping, but with powder and rouge she had tried to conceal the traces of her tears; and at dinner she sat silent, hardly answering when Margaret French spoke to her.

After dinner Ashe went out with his cigar towards the Piazza. He was in a smarting, dazed state, beginning, however, to realize the blow more than he had done at first. He believed that Parham himself would not be at all sorry to be rid of him. He and his friends formed a powerful group both in the cabinet and out of it. But they were forcing the pace, and the elements of resistance and reaction were strong. He pictured the dismay of his friends, the possible breakdown of the reforming party. Of course they might so stand by him—and the suppression of the book might be so complete—

At this moment he caught sight of a newspaper contents bill displayed at the door of the only shop in the Piazza which sold English newspapers. One of the lines ran, "Anonymous attack on the Premier." He started, went in and bought the paper. There, in the "London Topics" column, was the following paragraph:

"A string of extracts from a forthcoming book, accompanied by a somewhat startling publisher's statement, has lately been sent round to the press. We are asked not to print them before the day of publication, but they have already roused much attention, if not excitement. They certainly contain a very gross attack on the Prime Minister, based apparently on first-hand information, and involving indiscretions personal and political of an unusually serious character. The wife of a cabinet minister is freely named as the writer, and even if no violation of cabinet secrecy is concerned, it is clear that the book outrages the confidential relations which ought to subsist between a Premier and his colleagues, if government on our English system is to be satisfactorily carried on. The statements it makes with every appearance of authority both as to the relations between Lord Parham and some of the most important members of his cabinet, and as to the Premier's intentions with regard to one or two of the most vital questions now before the country, are calculated seriously to embarrass the government. We fear the book will have a veritable succès de scandale."

"That fellow at least has done his best to kick the ball, damn him!" thought Ashe, with contempt, as he thrust the paper into his pocket.

It was no more than he expected; but it put an end to all thoughts of a more hopeful kind. He walked up and down the Piazza smoking, till midnight, counting the hours till he could reach London, and revolving the phrases of a telegram to be sent to his solicitor before starting.

Kitty made no sign or sound when he entered her room. Her fair head was turned away from him, and all was dark. He could hardly believe that she was asleep; but it was a relief to him to accept her pretence of it, and to escape all further conversation. He himself slept but little. The mere profundity of the Venetian silence teased him; it reminded him how far he was from home.

Two images pursued him—of Kitty writing the book, while he was away electioneering or toiling at his new office—and then, of his returns to Haggart—tired or triumphant—on many a winter evening, of her glad rush into his arms, her sparkling face on his breast.

Or again, he conjured up the scene when the MS. had been shown to Darrell—his pretence of disapproval, his sham warnings, and the smile on his sallow face as he walked off with it. Ashe looked back to the early days of his friendship with Darrell, when he, Ashe, was one of the leaders at Eton, popular with the masters in spite of his incorrigible idleness, and popular with the boys because of his bodily prowess, and Darrell had been a small, sickly, bullied colleger. Scene after scene recurred to him, from their later relations at Oxford also. There was a kind of deliberation in the way in which he forced his thoughts into this channel; it made an outlet for a fierce bitterness of spirit, which some imperious instinct forbade him to spend on Kitty.

He dozed in the later hours of the night, and was roused by something touching his hand, which lay outside the bedclothes. Again the little head!—and the soft curls. Kitty was there—crouched beside him—weeping. There flashed into his mind an image of the night in London when she had come to him thus; and unwelcome as the whole remembrance was, he was conscious of a sudden swelling wave of pity and passion. What if he sprang up, caught her in his arms, forgave her, and bade the world go hang!

No! The impulse passed, and in his turn he feigned sleep. The thought of her long deceit, of the selfish wilfulness wherewith she had requited deep love and easy trust, was too much; it seared his heart. And there was another and a subtler influence. To have forgiven so easily would have seemed treachery to those high ambitions and ideals from which—as he thought, only too certainly—she had now cut him off. It was part of his surviving youth that the catastrophe seemed to him so absolute. Any thought of the fresh efforts which would be necessary for the reconquering of his position was no less sickening to him than that of the immediate discomforts and humiliations to be undergone. He would go back to books and amusement; and in the idling of the future there would be plenty of time for love-making.

In the morning, when all preparations were made, the gondoliers waiting below, Ashe's telegram sent, and the circular notes handed over to Margaret French, who had discreetly left the room, William approached his wife.

"Good-bye!" said Kitty, and gave him her hand, with a strange look and smile.

Ashe, however, drew her to him and kissed her—against her will. "I'll do my best, Kitty," he said, in a would-be cheery voice—"to pull us through. Perhaps—I don't know!—things may turn out better than I think. Good-bye. Take care of yourself. I'll write, of course. Don't hurry home. You'll want a fortnight or three weeks yet."

Kitty said not a word, and in another minute he was gone. The Italian servants congregated below at the water-gate sent laughing "A rivederlas" after the handsome, good-tempered Englishman, whom they liked and regretted; the gondola moved off; Kitty heard the plash of the water. But she held back from the window.

Half-way to the bend of the canal beyond the Accademia, Ashe turned and gave a long look at the balcony. No one was there. But just as the gondola was passing out of sight, Kitty slipped onto the balcony. She could see only the figure of Piero, the gondolier, and in another second the boat was gone. She stayed there for many minutes, clinging to the balustrade and staring, as it seemed, at the sparkle of autumnal sun which danced on the green water and on the red palace to her right.

All the morning Kitty on her sofa pretended to write letters. Margaret French, working or reading behind her, knew that she scarcely got through a single note, that her pen lay idle on the paper, while her eyes absently watched the palace windows on the other side of the canal. Miss French was quite certain that some tragic cause of difference between the husband and wife had arisen. Kitty, the indiscreet, had for once kept her own counsel about the book, and Ashe had with his own hands packed away the volumes which had arrived the night before; so that she could only guess, and from that delicacy of feeling restrained her as much as possible.

Once or twice Kitty seemed on the point of unburdening herself. Then overmastering tears would threaten; she would break off and begin to write. At luncheon her look alarmed Miss French, so white was the little face, so large and restless the eyes. Ought Mr. Ashe to have left her, and left her apparently in anger? No doubt he thought her much better. But Margaret remembered the worst days of her illness, the anxious looks of the doctors, and the anguish that Kitty had suffered in the first weeks after her child's death. She seemed now, indeed, to have forgotten little Harry, so far as outward expression went; but who could tell what was passing in her strange, unstable mind? And it often seemed to Margaret that the signs of the past summer were stamped on her indelibly, for those who had eyes to see.

Was it the perception of this pity beside her that drove Kitty to solitude and flight? At any rate, she said after luncheon that she would go to Madame d'Estrées, and did not ask Miss French to accompany her.

She set out accordingly with the two gondoliers. But she had hardly passed the Accademia before she bid her men take a cross-cut to the Giudecca. On these wide waters, with their fresher air and fuller sunshine, a certain physical comfort seemed to breathe upon her.

"Piero, it is not rough! Can we go to the Lido?" she asked the gondolier behind her.

Piero, who was all smiles and complaisance, as well he might be with a lady who scattered lire as freely as Kitty did, turned the boat at once for that channel "Del Orfano" where the bones of the vanquished dead lie deep amid the ooze.

They passed San Giorgio, and were soon among the piles and sand-banks of the lagoon. Kitty sat in a dream which blotted the sunshine from the water. It seemed to her that she was a dead creature, floating in a dead world. William had ceased to love her. She had wrecked his career and destroyed her own happiness. Her child had been taken from her. Lady Tranmore's affection had been long since alienated. Her own mother was nothing to her; and her friends in society, like Madeleine Alcot, would only laugh and gloat over the scandal of the book.

No—everything was finished! As her fingers hanging over the side of the gondola felt the touch of the water, her morbid fancy, incredibly quick and keen, fancied herself drowned, or poisoned—lying somehow white and cold on a bed where William might see and forgive her.

Then with a start of memory which brought the blood rushing to her face, she thought of Cliffe standing beside the door of the great hall in the Vercelli palace—she seemed to be looking again into those deep, expressive eyes, held by the irony and the passion with which they were infused. Had the passion any reference to her?—or was it merely part of the man's nature, as inseparable from it as flame from the volcano? If William had cast her off, was there still one man—wild and bad, indeed, like herself, but poet and hero nevertheless—who loved her?

She did not much believe it; but still the possibility of it lured her, like some dark gulf that promised her oblivion from this pain—pain which tortured one so impatient of distress, so hungry for pleasure and praise.

In those days the Lido was still a noble and solitary shore, without the degradations of to-day.

Kitty walked fast and furiously across the sandy road, and over the shingles, turning, when she reached the firm sand, southward towards Malamocco. It was between four and five, and the autumn afternoon was fast declining. A fresh breeze was on the sea, and the short waves, intensely blue under a wide, clear heaven, broke in dazzling foam on the red-brown sand.

She seemed to be alone between sea and sky, save for two figures approaching from the south—a fisher-boy with a shrimping-net and a man walking bareheaded. She noticed them idly. A mirage of sun was between her and them, and the agony of remorse and despair which held her blunted all perceptions.

Thus it was that not till she was close upon him did her dazzled sight recognize Geoffrey Cliffe.

He saw her first, and stopped in motionless astonishment on the edge of the sand. She almost ran against him, when his voice arrested her.

"Lady Kitty!"

She put her hand to her breast, wavered, and came to a stand-still. He saw a little figure in black between him and those "gorgeous towers and cloud-capped palaces" of Alpine snow, which dimly closed in the north; and beneath the drooping hat a face even more changed and tragic than that which had haunted him since their meeting of the day before.

On a certain cloudy afternoon, some ten days later, a fishing-boat, with a patched orange sail, might have been seen scudding under a light northwesterly breeze through the channels which connect the island of San Francesco with the more easterly stretches of the Venetian lagoon. The boat presently neared the shore of one of the cultivated lidi—islands formed out of the silt of many rivers by the travail of centuries, some of them still mere sand or mud banks, others covered by vineyards and fruit orchards—which, with the murazzi or sea-walls of Venice, stand sentinel between the city and the sea. On the lido along which the boat was coasting, the vintage was long since over and the fruit gathered; the last yellow and purple leaves in the orchards, "a pestilent-stricken multitude," were to-day falling fast to earth, under the sighing, importunate wind. The air was warm; November was at its mildest. But all color and light were drowned in floating mists, and darkness lay over the distant city. It was one of those drear and ghostly days which may well have breathed into the soul of Shelley that superb vision of the dead generations of Venice, rising, a phantom host from the bosom of the sunset, and sweeping in "a rapid mask of death" over the shadowed waters that saw the birth and may yet furnish the tomb of so vast a fame.

Two persons were in the boat—Kitty, wrapped in sables, her straying hair held close by a cap of the same fur—and Geoffrey Cliffe. They had been wandering in the lagoons all day, in order to escape from Venice and observers—first at Torcello, then at San Francesco, and now they were ostensibly coming home in a wide sweep along the northern lidi and murazzi, that Cliffe might show his companion, from near by, the Porto del Lido, that exit from the lagoons where the salt lakes grow into the sea.

A certain wildness and exaltation, drawn from the solitudes around them and from their tête-à-tête, could be read in both the man and the woman. Cliffe watched his companion incessantly. As he lay against the side of the boat at her feet, he saw her framed in the curving sides of the stern, and could read her changing expressions. Not a happy face!—that he knew! A face haunted by shadows from an underworld of thought—pursuing furies of remorse and fear. Not the less did he triumph that he had it there, in his power; nor had the flashes of terror and wavering will which he discerned in any way diminished its beauty.

"How long have you known—that woman?" Kitty asked him, suddenly, after a pause broken only by the playing of the wind with the sail.

Cliffe laughed.

"The Ricci? Why do you want to know, madame?"

She made a contemptuous lip.

"I knew her first," said Cliffe, "some years ago in Milan. She was then at La Scala—walking on—paid for her good looks. Then somebody sent her to Paris to the Conservatoire, which she only left this spring. This is her first Italian engagement. Her people are shopkeepers here—in the Merceria—which helped her. She is as vain as a peacock and as dangerous as a pet panther."

"Dangerous!" Kitty's scorn had passed into her voice.

"Well, Italy is still the country of the knife," said Cliffe, lightly—"and I could still hire a bravo or two—in Venice—if I wanted them."

"Does the Ricci hire them?"

Cliffe shrugged his shoulders.

"She'd do it without winking, if it suited her." Then, after a pause—"Do you still wonder why I should have chosen her society?"

"Oh no," said Kitty, hastily. "You told me."

"As much as a friend cares to know?"

She nodded, flushing, and dropped the subject.

Cliffe's mouth still smiled, but his eyes studied her with a veiled and sinister intensity.

"I have not seen the lady for a week," he resumed. "She pesters me with notes. I promised to go and see her in a new play to-morrow night, but—"

"Oh, go!" said Kitty—"by all means go!"

"'Ruy Blas' in Italian? I think not. Ah! did you see that gleam on the Campanile?—marvellous!... Miladi, I have a question to ask you."

"Dites!" said Kitty.

"Did you put me into your book?"

"Certainly."

"What kind of things did you say?"

"The worst I could!"

"Ah! How shall I get a copy?" said Cliffe, musing.

She made no answer, but she was conscious of a sudden movement—was it of terror? At the bottom of her soul was she, indeed, afraid of the man beside her?

"By-the-way," he resumed, "you promised to tell me your news of this morning. But you haven't told me a word!"

She turned away. She had gathered her furs around her, and her face was almost hidden by them.

"Nothing is settled," she said, in a cold, reluctant voice.

"Which means that you won't tell me anything more?"

She was silent. Her lip had a proud line which piqued him.

"You think I am not worthy to know?"

Her eye gleamed.

"What does it matter to you?"

"Oh, nothing! I should have been glad to hear that all was well, and Ashe's mind at rest about his prospects."

"His prospects!" she repeated, with a scorn which stung. "How dare we mention his name here at all?"

Cliffe reddened.

"I dare," he said, calmly.

Kitty looked at him—a quivering defiance in face and frame; then bent forward.

"Would you like to know—who is the best—the noblest—the handsomest—the most generous—the most delightful man I have ever met?"

Each word came out winged and charged with a strange intensity of passion.

"Do I?" said Cliffe, raising his eyebrows—"do I want to know?"

Her look held him.

"My husband, William Ashe!"

And she fell back, flushed and breathless, like one who throws out a rebel and challenging flag.

Cliffe was silent a moment, observing her.

"Strange!" he said, at last. "It is only when you are miserable you are kind. I could wish you miserable again, chérie."

Tone and look broke into a sombre wildness before which she shrank. Her own violence passed away. She leaned over the side of the boat, struggling with tears.

"Then you have your wish," was her muffled answer.

The three bronzed Venetians, a father and two sons, who were working the bragozzo glanced curiously at the pair. They were persuaded that these charterers of their boat were lovers flying from observation, and the unknown tongue did but stimulate guessing.

Cliffe raised himself impatiently.

They were nearing a point where the line of murazzi they had been following—low breakwaters of great strength—swept away from them outward and eastward towards a distant opening. On the other side of the channel was a low line of shore, broadening into the Lido proper, with its scattered houses and churches, and soon lost in the mist as it stretched towards the south.

"Ecco!—il Porto del Lido!" said the older boatman, pointing far away to a line of deeper color beneath a dark and lowering sky.

Kitty bent over the side of the boat staring towards the dim spot he showed her—where was the mouth of the sea.

"Kitty!" said Cliffe's voice beside her, hoarse and hurried—"one word, and I tell these fellows to set their helm for Trieste. This boat will carry us well—and the wind is with us."

She turned and looked him in the face.

"And then?"

"Then? We'll think it out together, Kitty—together!" He bent his lips to her hand, bending so as to conceal the action from the sailors. But she drew her hand away.

"You and I," she said, fiercely—"would tire of each other in a week!"

"Have the courage to try! No!—you should not tire of me in a week! I would find ways to keep you mine, Kitty—cradled, and comforted, and happy."

"Happy!" Her slight laugh was the forlornest thing. "Take me out to sea—and drop me there—with a stone round my neck. That might be worth doing—perhaps."

He surveyed her unmoved.

"Listen, Kitty! This kind of thing can't go on forever."

"What are you waiting for?" she said, tauntingly. "You ought to have gone last week."

"I am not going," he said, raising himself by a sudden movement—"till you come with me!"

Kitty started, her eyes riveted to his.

"And yet go I will! Not even you shall stop me, Kitty. I'll take the help I've gathered back to those poor devils—if I die for it. But you'll come with me—you'll come!"

She drew back—trembling under an impression she strove to conceal.

"If you will talk such madness, I can't help it," she said, with shortened breath.

"Yes—you'll come!" he said, nodding. "What have you to do with Ashe, Kitty, any longer? You and he are already divided. You have tried life together and what have you made of it? You're not fit for this mincing, tripping London life—nor am I? And as for morals—- I'll tell you a strange thing, Kitty." He bent forward and grasped her hands with a force which hurt—from which she could not release herself. "I believe—yes, by God, I believe!—that I am a better man than I was before I started on this adventure. It's been like drinking at last at the very source of life—living, not talking about it. One bitter night last February, for instance, I helped a man—one of the insurgents—who had taken to the mountains with his wife and children—to carry his wife, a dying woman, over a mountain-pass to the only place where she could possibly get help and shelter. We carried her on a litter, six men taking turns. The cold and the fatigue were such that I shudder now when I think of it. Yet at the end I seemed to myself a man reborn. I was happier than I had ever been in my life. Some mystic virtue had flowed into me. Among those men and women, instead of being the selfish beast I've been all these years, I can forget myself. Death seems nothing—brotherhood—liberty!—everything! And yet—"

His face relaxed, became ironical, reflective. But he held the hands close, his grasp of them hidden by the folds of fur which hung about her.

"And yet—I can say to you without a qualm—put this marriage which has already come to naught behind you—and come with me! Ashe cramps you. He blames you—you blame yourself. What reality has all that? It makes you miserable—it wastes life. I accept your nature—I don't ask you to be anything else than yourself—your wild, vain, adorable self! Ashe asks you to put restraint on yourself—to make painful efforts—to be good for his sake—the sake of something outside. I say—come and look at the elemental things—death and battle—hatred, solitude, love. They'll sweep us out of ourselves!—no need to strive and cry for it—into the great current of the world's being—bring us close to the forces at the root of things—the forces which create—and destroy. Dip your heart in that stream, Kitty, and feel it grow in your breast. Take a nurse's dress—put your hand in mine—and come! I can't promise you luxuries or ease. You've had enough of those. Come and open another door in the House of Life! Take starving women and hunted children into your arms—- feel with them—weep with them—look with them into the face of death! Make friends with nature—with rocks, forests, torrents—with night and dawn, which you've never seen, Kitty! They'll love you—they'll support you—the rough people—and the dark forests. They'll draw nature's glamour round you—they'll pour her balm into your soul. And I shall be with you—beside you!—your guardian—your lover—your lover, Kitty—till death do us part."

He looked at her with the smile which was his only but sufficient beauty; the violent, exciting words flowed in her ear, amid the sound of rising waves and the distant talk of the fishermen. His hand crushed hers; his mad, imploring eyes repelled and constrained her. The wild hungers and curiosities of her being rushed to meet him; she heard the echo of her own words to Ashe: "More life—more life!—even though it lead to pain—and agony—and tears!"

Then she wrenched herself away—suddenly, contemptuously.

"Of course, that's all nonsense—romantic nonsense. You've perhaps forgotten that I am one of the women who don't stir without their maid."

Cliffe's expression changed. He thrust his hands into his pockets.

"Oh, well, if you must have a maid," he said, dryly, "that settles it. A maid would be the deuce. And yet—I think I could find you a Bosnian girl—strong and faithful—"

Their eyes met—his already full of a kind of ownership, tender, confident, humorous even—hers alive with passionate anger and resistance.

"Without a qualm!" she repeated, in a low voice—"without a qualm! Mon Dieu!"

She turned and looked towards the Adriatic.

"Where are we?" she said, imperiously.

For a gesture of command on Cliffe's part, unseen by her, had sent the boat eastward, spinning before the wind. The lagoon was no longer tranquil. It was covered with small waves; and the roar of the outer sea, though still far off, was already in their ears. The mist lifting showed white, distant crests of foam on a tumbling field of water, and to the north, clothed in tempestuous purple, the dim shapes of mountains.

Kitty raised herself, and beckoned towards the captain of the bragozzo.

"Giuseppe!"

"Commanda, Eccellenza!"

The man came forward.

With a voice sharp and clear, she gave the order to return at once to Venice. Cliffe watched her, the veins on his forehead swelling. She knew that he debated with himself whether he should give a counter-order or no.

"A Venezia!" said Kitty, waving her hand towards the sailors, her eyes shining under the tangle of her hair.

The helm was put round, and beneath a tacking sail the boat swept southward.

With an awkward laugh Cliffe fell back into his seat, stretching his long limbs across the boat. He had spoken under a strong and genuine impulse. His passion for her had made enormous strides in these few wild days beside her. And yet the fantastic poet's sense responded at a touch to the new impression. He shook off the heroic mood as he had doffed his Bosnian cloak. In a few minutes, though the heightened color remained, he was chatting and laughing as though nothing had happened.

She, exhausted physically and morally by her conflict with him, hardly spoke on the way home. He entertained her, watching her all the time—a hundred speculations about her passing through his brain. He understood perfectly how the insight which she had allowed him into her grief and her remorse had broken down the barriers between them. Her incapacity for silence, and reticence, had undone her. Was he a villain to have taken advantage of it?

Why? With a strange, half-cynical clearness he saw her, as the obstacle that she was, in Ashe's life and career. For Ashe—supposing he, Cliffe, persuaded her—there would be no doubt a first shock of wrath and pain—then a sense of deliverance. For her, too, deliverance! It excited his artist's sense to think of all the further developments through which he might carry that eager, plastic nature. There would be a new Kitty, with new capacities and powers. Wasn't that justification enough? He felt himself a sculptor in the very substance of life, moulding a living creature afresh, disengaging it from harsh and hindering conditions. What was there vile in that?

The argument pursued itself.

"The modern judges for himself—makes his own laws, as a god, knowing good and evil. No doubt in time a new social law will emerge—with new sanctions. Meanwhile, here we are, in a moment of transition, manufacturing new types, exploring new combinations—by which let those who come after profit!"

Little delicate, distinguished thing!—every aspect of her, angry or sweet, sad or wilful, delighted his taste and sense. Moreover, she was his deliverance, too—from an ugly and vulgar entanglement of which he was ashamed. He shrank impatiently from memories which every now and then pursued him of the Ricci's coarse beauty and exacting ways. Kitty had just appeared in time! He felt himself rehabilitated in his own eyes. Love may trifle as it pleases with what people call "law"; but there are certain æsthetic limits not to be transgressed.

The Ricci, of course, was wild and thirsting for revenge. Let her! Anxieties far more pressing disturbed him. What if he tempted Kitty to this escapade—and the rough life killed her? He saw clearly how frail she was.

But it was the artificiality of her life, the innumerable burdens of civilization, which had brought her to this! Women were not the weaklings they seemed, or believed themselves to be. For many of them, probably for Kitty, a rude and simple life would mean not only fresh mental but fresh physical strength. He had seen what women could endure, for love's or patriotism's sake! Make but appeal to the spirit—the proud and tameless spirit—and how the flesh answered! He knew that his power with Kitty came largely from a certain stoicism, a certain hardness, mingled, as he would prove to her, with a boundless devotion. Let him carry it through—without fears—and so enlarge her being and his own! And as to responsibilities beyond, as to their later lives—let time take care of its own births. For the modern determinist of Cliffe's type there is no responsibility. He waits on life, following where it leads, rejoicing in each new feeling, each fresh reaction of consciousness on experience, and so links his fatalist belief to that Nietzsche doctrine of self-development at all costs, and the coming man, in which Cliffe's thought anticipated the years.

Kitty meanwhile listened to his intermittent talk of Venice, or Bosnia, with all its suggestions of new worlds and far horizons, and scarcely said a word.

But through the background of the brain there floated with her, as with him, a procession of unspoken thoughts. She had received three letters from William. Immediately on his arrival he had tendered his resignation. Lord Parham had asked him to suspend the matter for ten days. Only the pressure of his friends, it seemed, and the consternation of his party had wrung from Ashe a reluctant consent. Meanwhile, all copies of the book had been bought up; the important newspapers had readily lent themselves to the suppression of the affair; private wraths had been dealt with by conciliatory lawyers; and in general a far more complete hushing-up had been attained than Ashe had ever imagined possible. There was no doubt infinite gossip in the country-houses. But sympathy for Kitty in her grief, for Ashe himself, and Lady Tranmore, had done much to keep it within bounds. The little Dean especially, beloved of all the world, had been incessantly active on behalf of peace and oblivion.

All this Kitty read or guessed from William's letters. After all, then, the harm had not been so great! Why such a panic!—such a hurry to leave her!—when she was ill—and sorry? And now how curtly, how measuredly he wrote! Behind the hopefulness of his tone she read the humiliation and soreness of his mind—and said to herself, with a more headlong conviction than ever, that he would never forgive her.

No, never!—and especially now that she had added a thousandfold to the original offence. She had never written to him since his departure. Margaret French, too, was angry with her—had almost broken with her.

They left their boat on the Riva, and walked to the Piazza, through the now starry dusk. As they passed the great door of St. Mark's, two persons came out of the church. Kitty recognized Mary Lyster and Sir Richard. She bowed slightly; Sir Richard put his hand to his hat in a flurried way; but Mary, looking them both in the face, passed without the smallest sign, unless the scorn in face and bearing might pass for recognition.

Kitty gasped.

"She cut me!" she said, in a shaking voice.

"Oh no!" said Cliffe. "She didn't see you in the dark."

Kitty made no reply. She hurried along the northern side of the Piazza, avoiding the groups which were gathered in the sunset light round the flocks of feeding pigeons, brushing past the tables in front of the cafe's, still well filled on this mild evening.

"Take care!" said Cliffe, suddenly, in a low, imperative voice.

Kitty looked up. In her abstraction she saw that she had nearly come into collision with a woman sitting at a café table and surrounded by a noisy group of men.

With a painful start Kitty perceived the mocking eyes of Mademoiselle Ricci. The Ricci said something in Italian, staring the while at the English lady; and the men near her laughed, some furtively, some loudly.

Cliffe's face set. "Walk quickly!" he said in her ear, hurrying her past.

When they had reached one of the narrow streets behind the Piazza, Kitty looked at him—white and haughtily tremulous. "What did that mean?"

"Why should you deign to ask?" was Cliffe's impatient reply. "I have ceased to go and see her. I suppose she guesses why."

"I will have no rivalry with Mademoiselle Ricci!" cried Kitty.

"You can't help it," said Cliffe, calmly. "The powers of light are always in rivalry with the powers of darkness."

And without further pleading or excuse he stalked on, his gaunt form and striking head towering above the crowded pavement. Kitty followed him with difficulty, conscious of a magnetism and a force against which she struggled in vain.

About a week afterwards Kitty shut herself up one evening in her room to write to Ashe. She had just passed through an agitating conversation with Margaret French, who had announced her intention of returning to England at once, alone, if Kitty would not accompany her. Kitty's hands were trembling as she began to write.

"I am glad—oh! so glad, William—that you have withdrawn your resignation—that people have come forward so splendidly, and made you withdraw it—that Lord Parham is behaving decently—and that you have been able to get hold of all those copies of the book. I always hoped it would not be quite so bad as you thought. But I know you must have gone through an awful time—and I'm sorry.

"William, I want to tell you something—for I can't go on lying to you—or even just hiding the truth. I met Geoffrey Cliffe here—before you left—and I never told you. I saw him first in a gondola the night of the serenata—and then at the Armenian convent. Do you remember my hurrying you and Margaret into the garden? That was to escape meeting him. And that same afternoon when I was in the unused rooms of the Palazzo Vercelli—the rooms they show to tourists—he suddenly appeared—and somehow I spoke to him, though I had never meant to do so again.

"Then when you left me I met him again—that afternoon—and he found out I was very miserable and made me tell him everything. I know I had no right to do so—they were your secrets as well as mine. But you know how little I can control myself—it's wretched, but it's true.

"William, I don't know what will happen. I can't make out from Margaret whether she has written to you or not—she won't tell me. If she has, this letter will not be much news to you. But, mind, I write it of my own free will, and not because Margaret may have forced my hand. I should have written it anyway. Poor old darling!—she thinks me mad and bad, and to-night she tells me she can't take the responsibility of looking after me any longer. Women like her can never understand creatures like me—and I don't want her to. She's a dear saint, and as true as steel—not like your Mary Lysters! I could go on my knees to her. But she can't control or save me. Not even you could, William. You've tried your best, and in spite of you I'm going to perdition, and I can't stop myself.

"For, William, there's something broken forever between you and me. I know it was I who did the wrong, and that you had no choice but to leave me when you did. But yet you did leave me, though I implored you not. And I know very well that you don't love me as you used to—why should you?—and that you never can love me in the same way again. Every letter you write tells me that. And though I have deserved it all, I can't bear it. When I think of coming home to England, and how you would try to be nice to me—how good and dear and magnanimous you would be, and what a beast I should feel—I want to drown myself and have done.

"It all seems to me so hopeless. It is my own nature—- the stuff out of which I am cut—that's all wrong. I may promise my breath away that I will be discreet and gentle and well behaved, that I'll behave properly to people like Lady Parham, that I'll keep secrets, and not make absurd friendships with absurd people, that I'll try and keep out of debt, and so on. But what's the use? It's the will in me—the something that drives, or ought to drive—that won't work. And nobody ever taught me or showed me, that I can remember, till I met you. In Paris at the Place Vendôme, half the time I used to live with maman and papa, be hideously spoiled, dressed absurdly, eat off silver plate, and make myself sick with rich things—and then for days together maman would go out or away, forget all about me, and I used to storm the kitchen for food. She either neglected me or made a show of me; she was my worst enemy, and I hated and fought her—till I went to the convent at ten. When I was fourteen maman asked a doctor about me. He said I should probably go mad—and at the convent they thought the same. Maman used to throw this at me when she was cross with me.

"Well, I don't repeat this to make you excuse me and think better of me—- it's all too late for that—but because I am such a puzzle to myself, and I try to explain things. I did love you, William—I believe I do still—but when I think of our living together again, my arms drop by my side and I feel like a dead creature. Your life is too great a thing for me. Why should I spoil or hamper it? If you loved me, as you did once—if you still thought everything worth while, then, if I had a spark of decency left, I might kill myself to free you, but I should never do—what I may do now. But, William, you'll forget me soon. You'll pass great laws, and make great speeches, and the years when I tormented you—and all my wretched ways—will seem such a small, small thing.

"Geoffrey says he loves me. And I think he does, though how long it will last, or may be worth, no one can tell. As for me, I don't know whether I love him. I have no illusion about him. But there are moments when he absolutely holds me—when my will is like wax in his hands. It is because, I think, of a certain grandness—grandeur seems too strong—in his character. It was always there; because no one could write such poems as his without it. But now it's more marked, though I don't know that it makes him a better man. He thinks it does; but we all deceive ourselves. At any rate, he is often superb, and I feel that I could die, if not for him, at least with him. And he is not unlikely to die in some heroic way. He went out as you know simply as correspondent and to distribute relief, but lately he has been fighting for these people—of course he has!—and when he goes back he is to be one of their regular leaders. When he talks of it he is noble, transformed. It reminds me of Byron—his wicked life here—and then his death at Missolonghi. Geoffrey can do such base, cruel things—and yet—

"But I haven't yet told you. He asks me to go with him, back to the fighting-lines in upper Bosnia. There seems to be a great deal that women can do. I shall wear a nurse's uniform, and probably nurse at a little hospital he founded—high up in one of the mountain valleys. I know this will almost make you laugh. You will think of me, not knowing how to put on a button without Blanche—and wanting to be waited on every moment. But you'll see; there'll be nothing of that sort. I wonder whether it's hardship I've been thirsting for all my life—even when I seemed such a selfish, luxurious little ape?

"At the same time, I think it will kill me—and that would be the best end of all. To have some great, heroic experience, and then—'cease upon the midnight with no pain!...'

"Oh, if I thought you'd care very, very much, I should have pain—horrible pain. But I know you won't. Politics have taken my place. Think of me sometimes, as I was when we were first married—and of Harry—my little, little fellow!

"—Maman and I have had a ghastly scene. She came to scold me for my behavior—to say I was the talk of Venice. She! Of course I know what she means. She thinks if I am divorced she will lose her allowance—and she can't bear the thought of that, though Markham Warington is quite rich. My heart just boiled within me. I told her it is the poison of her life that works in me, and that whatever I do, she has no right to reproach me. Then she cried—and I was like ice—and at last she went. Warington, good fellow, has written to me, and asked to see me. But what is the use?

"I know you'll leave me the £500 a year that was settled on me. It'll be so good for me to be poor—and dressed in serge—and trying to do something else with these useless hands than writing books that break your heart. I am giving away all my smart clothes. Blanche is going home. Oh, William, William! I'm going to shut this, and it's like the good-bye of death—a mean and ugly—death.

"... Later. They have just brought me a note from Danieli's. So Margaret did write to you, and your mother has come. Why did you send her, William? She doesn't love me—and I shall only stab and hurt her. Though I'll try not—for your sake."

Two days later Ashe received almost by the same post which brought him the letter from Kitty, just quoted, the following letter from his mother: