Gray hairs seemed to inspire his respect, to command his attentions in a way that youth and beauty utterly failed to do.

These things seemed suddenly clear to Penelope as she stood there watching him.

A hundred little acts of graceful kindness, which she had noticed and admired, returned to her memory.

It was this man whom she had lifted her hand to betray! It was this man who was to be accounted guilty, even of crime! There came a sudden revulsion of feeling.

The whole mechanical outlook upon life, as she had known it, seemed, even in those few seconds, to become a false and meretricious thing.