Just as one cannot be surprised at death when it has been prepared for by a long illness, as the liar cannot be surprised by the consequences of his lies, so I was not surprised by Miss Pride’s news, for I had known from the moment Hopestill spoke Philip’s name the afternoon before that it was her intention to marry him by fair means or foul. And yet, want of surprise does not cancel out grief over the death nor regret that the lies have been found out, and I did not hear Miss Pride without desolation. I mustered up what politeness I could, said I was sure she was happy over the turn of events, that it must have been something of a thunderclap since it was so sudden. Miss Pride assured me that on the contrary no one had been in the least taken unawares, but naturally everyone had been delighted.

What a revolting business appeared my sodden, sentimental interlude in the slums of Boston! While we had sat in dirty tumult, Hopestill in her turquoise dress with fresh camellias at her shoulder which Philip had bought her (probably at the same stall where earlier he had bought mine) was elegantly, forthrightly playing her game and playing it with an éclat which disguised her guile even to herself.

I was too absorbed with my diversified pains to determine, from Miss Pride’s manner, whether the damage I had done myself in her eyes was irreparable. I recalled the pinch she had given me last night when she had discovered Mr. Morgan in the library. It had been a sort of gesture of fellowship, as though she had wanted me to know that she knew that I, her pupil, shared fully her revulsion. How appalling then must have been the sight of my disheveled person, the sound of my thick voice as I stumbled into the vestibule!

No apology was forthcoming from my dry, swollen lips. I swayed, dumb and contrite, before the chess-table, awaiting my dismissal. She gave it finally and with a stingy smile, but one which made my heart leap for joy, she said, “I have been told that Bromo-Seltzer brings relief to your kind of suffering,” so that I knew my exile would not be permanent.