That was a fact, and she faced it. She didn’t love Stephen. She had never loved him. Therein had she cheated; that at least was true. She wasn’t cheating now whatever she had done in the past. All those things Stephen had said. . . . True? perhaps they were. She had made an end of it though. She hadn’t been able to pretend any longer. He had made that impossible. In a way, she supposed she had been forced into this, first honest action. She would have gone on pretending if Stephen had not torn down her barricades. It was Stephen who had brought matters to a climax, by his anger and his rebellious passion. She could not look back on that without a shudder. Pretence was over. She had done something dreadful in running away; had she been calmer or more sane she would never have done it: she would not, she thought, have had the courage. But since, in a moment of frightened madness, she had done it, she would never go back. Well, that was being honest. Only how maddening it all was! Stephen had said that honesty was a virtue. Mr. Hengist, too. Running away from your husband wasn’t a virtue, though. It was wicked, and she, Elizabeth Arden, had done it.

She would try to go on being honest; that, in part, was why she wrote to Stephen on the day after her arrival in town.

He came to the hotel; she had expected that, and she had braced herself to meet him. She was afraid; she dreaded seeing him, dreaded the inevitable argument. Even now, had her fear of him been less, she would have given in and returned to Queen’s Halt, because it was so awful to quarrel, and so much more natural to her to obey than to stand by her own resolves. Yet there was in her a curious streak of obstinacy. It showed itself sometimes in the details of life, and now it reared up its head to face this great disaster. In madness had she taken the biggest, most momentous step of her life; it would be easier to go on than to turn back; easier after the first struggle.

She was in her bedroom when Stephen came. The hall-porter fetched her, and immediately her pulses started to race again.

Stephen was very pale. She found him in the deserted lounge, standing with his back to the fire, tight-lipped, and with hard anxious eyes. There was no trace of the demon in his face, but Elizabeth felt, It is there, covered up. It is always there. I can never go back to him.

Neither spoke for a long minute. She was trembling; when Stephen stepped forward she shrank.

“I’ve come to take you home, Elizabeth.”

She shook her head.

“I—c-can’t.”

There fell another silence. The ticking of the marble clock on the mantelpiece dinned in Elizabeth’s ears.