touches her, then he will love me, if only for an hour; if it fades out
too soon--" And the beam crept on. That shadowy path of light, with its
dancing dust-motes, was it indeed charged with Fate--indeed the augury
of Love or Darkness? And, slowly moving, it mounted, the sun sinking;
it rose above that bent head, hovered in a golden mist, passed--and
suddenly was gone.

Unsteadily, seeing nothing plain, Anna walked out of the church. Why she
passed her husband and the boy on the terrace without a look she could
not quite have said--perhaps because the tortured does not salute her
torturers. When she reached her room she felt deadly tired, and lying
down on her bed, almost at once fell asleep.

She was wakened by a sound, and, recognizing the delicate 'rat-tat' of
her husband's knock, did not answer, indifferent whether he came in or
no. He entered noiselessly. If she did not let him know she was awake,
he would not wake her. She lay still and watched him sit down astride of
a chair, cross his arms on its back, rest his chin on them, and fix
his eyes on her. Through her veil of eyelashes she had unconsciously
contrived that his face should be the one object plainly seen--the more
intensely visualized, because of this queer isolation. She did not feel
at all ashamed of this mutual fixed scrutiny, in which she had such
advantage. He had never shown her what was in him, never revealed what
lay behind those bright satiric eyes. Now, perhaps, she would see! And
she lay, regarding him with the intense excited absorption with which
one looks at a tiny wildflower through a magnifying-lens, and watches
its insignificance expanded to the size and importance of a hothouse
bloom. In her mind was this thought: He is looking at me with his real
self, since he has no reason for armour against me now. At first his
eyes seemed masked with their customary brightness, his whole face with