The struggle was too wearying, too hopeless, while she remained.

It was but a continual capitulation of conscience to what she dared not name.
By degrees, as she sat, Felice's mind--helped perhaps by the anticlimax of learning that her lover was unharmed after all her fright about him--grew wondrously strong in wise resolve.

For the moment she was in a mood, in the words of Mrs.Elizabeth Montagu, "to run mad with discretion;" and was so persuaded that discretion lay in departure that she wished to set about going that very minute.

Jumping up from her seat, she began to gather together some small personal knick-knacks scattered about the room, to feel that preparations were really in train.
While moving here and there she fancied that she heard a slight noise out-of-doors, and stood still.

Surely it was a tapping at the window.
A thought entered her mind, and burned her cheek.