counsel of the unknown person who had sold the "Aubyn Letters."
The subject was one not likely to fix her attention--she was not a
curious woman.

Glennard at this point laid down his fork and glanced at her
between the candle-shades. The alternative explanation of her
indifference was not slow in presenting itself. Her head had the
same listening droop as when he had caught sight of her the day
before in Flamel's company; the attitude revived the vividness of
his impression. It was simple enough, after all. She had ceased
to care for him because she cared for someone else.

As he followed her upstairs he felt a sudden stirring of his
dormant anger. His sentiments had lost all their factitious
complexity. He had already acquitted her of any connivance in his
baseness, and he felt only that he loved her and that she had
escaped him. This was now, strangely enough, his dominating
thought: the consciousness that he and she had passed through the
fusion of love and had emerged from it as incommunicably apart as
though the transmutation had never taken place. Every other
passion, he mused, left some mark upon the nature; but love passed
like the flight of a ship across the waters.

She sank into her usual seat near the lamp, and he leaned against
the chimney, moving about with an inattentive hand the knick-
knacks on the mantel.

Suddenly he caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. She was
looking at him. He turned and their eyes met.