"What can you settle that can make me stay?" asked Penny, in bitter
wrath. "Do you think that I would spend another night under this roof?
Wait here and see him, if you wish--you have the right to be here, not I!
He will never see me again."

She ran back into her bedroom for the little purse. In it were a few
pounds she had saved up to buy the man an easy chair for his coming
birthday. How often she had pictured his pleasure when he would be able
to lean back comfortably in it on the opposite side of the fireplace and
smoke his evening pipe, his handsome face beaming love and admiration.
The vision filled her with fresh loathing. She scarcely bade the other
woman good-night, but clasping her babe hurried from the room. Swiftly
down the stairs she ran, heedless of the cries of the woman she had left
behind, and out into the wind and rain of the dreary street--fit emblem,
in its forlorn wretchedness, of the future which loomed hopeless before
her.

* * * * * *

Two things added to the poignancy of Penny's unavailing grief in after
years: the innocence of Arthur Spence of any deception (except silence
regarding his past), and the fact that she never knew this until he had
given his life in his country's service. It was then too late to reap
comfort in her supreme sorrow from the knowledge of his uprightness both
to herself and to the wretched woman who had caused her unreflecting
flight on that fatal night.

For many months she had been hidden from all her former acquaintances in
the Convent of Mercy, whose Superior she had long been intimate with.