CHAPTER VIII.

Astonishing After-Effects Of A Heroine.



I.

George did not return to St. Peter's that afternoon; watched the cab
from view; walked back to Waterloo; thence took train to Paltley Hill
with mind awhirl.

Recovering from stunning shock the mind first sees a blur of events--
formless, seething, inextricably tangled. Deep in this boiling chaos
is one fact struggling more powerfully than the rest to cool and so to
shape itself. It kicks a leg free here, there an arm, then another
leg. Its exertions cause the whole more furiously to agitate--the
brain is afire. Very suddenly this struggling fact jumps free. Laid
hold of it is a cold spoon which, plunged back into the seething
cauldron, arrests the turmoil of its contents.

Or again, recovering from sudden shock the mind first sees a great
whirling, blinding cloud of dust which hides and wreathes about the
sudden topple of masonry that has provoked it. Here the slowly
emerging fact may be likened to a clear gangway through the ruin up
which the fevered owner may walk to investigate the catastrophe's
cause and extent.

So now with George. If not dazed by stunning shock, he was at least
awhirl by set back of the swift sequence of events which suddenly had