Knowing himself the traitor that he was, he could yet hold her, kiss her, murmur tender things to her, allow her to cry upon his breast, to stammer repentance and humbleness.

Cowardly! False! Treacherous! She flung out her hands, rigid, before her in the darkness, as though for ever putting him away.
Anguish?
Yes!--but not of such torturing quality as she could have felt a year, six months even, before this date.

She was astonished that she could bear her life, that he could sit there in the night stillness, motionless, holding her breath even, while Roger slept there in the shadowed bed.

Had this thing happened to her before their arrival at Heston, she must have fallen upon Roger in mad grief and passion, ready to kill him or herself; must at least have poured out torrents of useless words and tears.

She could not have sat dumb like this; in misery, but quite able to think things out, to envisage all the dark possibilities of the future.