suggestion of the passionate, half-frenzied woman in the kitchen of the
house only four doors away, had vanished; one would scarcely believe she
had ever stirred from the chair in which she had formally received
her husband two hours before. And yet she was thinking of herself and
Demorest in that kitchen.

His prompt and decisive response to her appeal, as shown in this last
bold and characteristic action, relieved, while it half piqued her. But
the overruling destiny which had enabled her to bring him from his hotel
to her mother's house unnoticed, had protected them while there, had
arrested a dangerous meeting between him and herself and her husband in
her own house, impressed her more than all. It imparted to her a hideous
tranquillity born of the doctrines of her youth--Predestination! She
reflected with secret exultation that her moral resolution to fly from
him and her conscientiously broken promise had been the direct means of
bringing him there; that step by step circumstances not in themselves
evil or to be combated had led her along; that even her husband and
mother had felt it their duty to assist towards this fateful climax! If
Edward had never kept up his worldly friendship, if she had never been
restricted and compassed in her own; if she had ever known the freedom
of other girls,--all this might not have happened. She had been elected
to share with Demorest and her husband the effects of their ungodliness.
She was no longer a free agent; what availed her resolutions? To
Demorest's imperious hope, she had said, "God knows." What more could
she say? Her small red lips grew white and compressed; her face rigid,
her eyes hollow and abstracted; she looked like the genius of asceticism
as she sat there, grimly formulating a dogmatic explanation of her
lawless and unlicensed passion.

The wind had risen to a gale without, and stirred even the sealed