Anne clung to her, gazing upwards at her eyes, in sheer despair.

"But back to hell I will not go," she went on saying. "Had I not seen
Heaven, they might perhaps have dragged me; but now I will not go--I will
not, that I swear! There is a thing which cannot be endured. Bear it no
woman should. Even I, who was not born a woman, but a wolf's she-cub, I
cannot. 'Twas not I, 'twas Fate," she said--"'twas not I, 'twas
Fate--'twas the great wheel we are bound to, which goes round and round
that we may be broken on it. 'Twas not I who bound myself there; and I
will not be broken so."

She said the words through her clenched teeth, and with all the mad
passion of her most lawless years; even at Anne she looked almost in the
old ungentle fashion, as though half scorning all weaker than herself,
and having small patience with them.

"There will be a way," she said--"there will be a way. I shall not swoon
again."

She left her divan and stood upright, the colour having come back to her
face; but the look Anne worshipped not having returned with it, 'twas as
though Mistress Clorinda Wildairs had been born again.

"To-morrow morning I go forth on Devil," she said; "and I shall be abroad
if any visitors come."

What passed in her chamber that night no human being knew. Anne, who
left her own apartment and crept into a chamber near hers to lie and
watch, knew that she paced to and fro, but heard no other sound, and
dared not intrude upon her.