sure,--and his affections had incomprehensibly become involved. He was as
one assisting at a high tragedy not unworthy of him, the outcome of which
he never for an instant doubted. And he gave Honora the impression that
he alone, inscrutable, could have pulled aside the curtain and revealed
the end.




CHAPTER XIII

OF THE WORLD BEYOND THE GATES

Honora paused in her toilet, and contemplated for a moment the white
skirt that her maid presented.

"I think I'll wear the blue pongee to-day, Mathilde," she said.

The decision for the blue pongee was the culmination of a struggle begun
with the opening of her eyes that morning. It was Sunday, and the time
was at hand when she must face the world. Might it not be delayed a
little while--a week longer? For the remembrance of the staring eyes
which had greeted her on her arrival at the station at Grenoble troubled
her. It seemed to her a cruel thing that the house of God should hold
such terrors for her: to-day she had a longing for it that she had never
felt in her life before.

Chiltern was walking in the garden, waiting for her to breakfast with
him, and her pose must have had in it an element of the self-conscious
when she appeared, smilingly, at the door.