upon it as the means to an end. The end came. I played my cards quite
ruthlessly, I gathered in the reward. I got your letter, I handed it to
my husband. Your career was finished, my husband's begun."

"This is most interesting," Julien muttered.

"Is it?" she answered. "I suppose it should have been an hour of
triumph with me. It simply isn't. I have come to a place in my life
which I don't understand. When I told myself that it was over, that I
had flirted with you, that I had won your friendship and your
confidence, betrayed you, ruined you for a peerage and that my husband
should take office, I should surely have been satisfied! It was for
that I had worked. I gave my husband the letter and I watched him walk
off in triumph. Since then I have not been myself. I have come to you,
Julien, to ask if there is no other end possible to this?"

Once more she raised her eyes. Julien came a step nearer to her. They
were standing now face to face.

"All of a sudden," she murmured, "I looked back and I saw the way I
have lived and the way I am living and the life that spreads itself out
before me. I saw myself a peeress, I saw myself receiving my husband's
guests, I saw the gratification of all those ambitions which have
seemed to me so wonderful. And I locked the door and I shrieked and it
seemed to me that there was a new thing and a new thought in my life. I
have done you a hideous wrong, Julien. There is only one way I can set
it right. There is only one moment in which it can be done, and that
moment is now. Tomorrow I shall be back again. For this one hour I see
the truth. I am a very rich woman, Julien. My husband's future, indeed,
is largely bound up with my wealth. Remember that in all I have done I