consequently appeared at the tea, but Rachael, meeting all
inquirers on the Moran terrace, late in the afternoon, with the
news that Dicky was quite all right, no harm done, asked prettily
for details of the affair they had missed.

She told herself that the past really made no difference in the
radiant present, but she knew it was not so. In a thousand little
ways she had lost caste, and she saw it, if Warren did not. A
certain bloom was gone. Girls were not quite as deferentially
adoring, women were a little less impressed. The old prestige was
somehow lessened. She knew that newcomers at the club, struck by
her beauty, were a little chilled by her history. She felt the
difference in the very air.

In her musings she went over the old arguments hotly. Why was she
merely the "divorced Mrs. Gregory?" Why were these casual
inquirers not told of Clarence, of her long endurance of neglect
and shame? More than once the thought came to her, that if other,
events had been as they were, and only the facts of her divorce
and remarriage lacking, she would have been Clarence's widow now.

"What's the difference? It all comes out the same!" commented
Warren, to whom she confided this thought.

"Then you and I would have been only engaged now," said Rachael,
smiling. "And I would like that!"

"You mean you regret your marriage?" he laughed, his arms about
her.