What did it matter that she had lifted her hot face from her cushions and had fled in wild haste to the arms of Phyllis Ayrton?
The fact remained the same; it was he who had run away from her.
That was a terrible reflection.

Hitherto she had never felt humiliated.
She had not felt that he had insulted her by his kisses; she had given him kiss for kiss.

She had but to hold up her finger and he was ready to obey her.

But now--what was she to think of him?
Had ever man so humiliated woman?
She had offered him, not her heart but her soul--had he not told her a few days before that he meant her to give him her soul?
and when she had laid heart and soul at his feet--that was how she put it to herself--he had not considered it worth his while to take the priceless gift that she offered to him.
"He will answer to me for that," she said, as she thought over her humiliation, in front of her dressing-glass that morning, while her maid was absent from the room.
Her wish was now not that her prayer had been less earnest, but that it had not been uttered at all.

It was necessary for her to meet him again in order that he might explain to her how it came that he had preferred the attractions incidental to a cruise with Lord Earlscourt and his friends to all that she had written to offer him.
And yet when her husband, after having quite finished with his paper, said: "It's very awkward that Herbert Courtland is not in town." She merely raised her shoulders an inch, saying: "I suppose that he has a right to take a holiday now and then.