written by her dying father she had felt that life could hold no
more bitterness. She had worshipped him--and he had abandoned her
callously. She was bone of his bone and he had made no effort even
for his own flesh. He had thrown her a burden on the convent that
sheltered her so willingly only for want of will power to conquer
the weakness that had devitalised brain and body. The thought
crushed her. As she read his confession, full of tardy remorse,
her proud heart had been sick with humiliation. She groped blindly
through a sea of despair, her faith broken, her trust gone. She
hid her sorrow and her shame, fulfilling her usual tasks,
following the ordinary routine--a little more silent, a little
more reserved--her eyes alone betraying the storm that was
overwhelming her. She had loved him so dearly--that was the sting.
She had guarded her memory of him so tenderly, weaving a thousand
extravagant tales about him, pinnacling him above all men, her
hero, her knight, her _preux chevalier._ And now she realised
that her memory was no memory, that she had built up a fantastic
figure of romance whose origin rested on nothing tangible, whose
elevation had been so lofty that his overthrow was demolition. Her
god had feet of clay. Her superman was nothing. All that she had
ever had, memory that was delusion, was taken from her. Woken
abruptly to the brutal truth she felt that she had nothing left to
cling to--a loneliness far greater than she had known before. Then
gradually her own honesty compelled her to admit her fantasy. The
dream man she had evolved had been of her own making, the virtues
with which she had endowed him bred of her own imagination. Of the
real man she knew nothing, and for the real man there dawned
slowly--though love for him had died--pity. It came to her,
passionately endeavouring to understand, that in the sheltered
life she led she had no knowledge of the temptations that beset a