"What brought you here?" he said hoarsely. She made no reply--only walked the faster. "Tell me why you came?" he said. "I will never leave you until you answer me." She turned and looked at him. Fresh from that scene in the studio--with those words still ringing in her ears--even the great change she saw in his face did not move her to pity. "I came," she said, "on the eve of my marriage, to ask forgiveness of a man whom I fancied I had wronged. I am glad I came. I found him happy, and in society after his own heart." Her voice was cold and contemptuous. He quivered beneath her scorn. At that moment a cab passed. Eugenia called it. "Leave me!" she said to Gerald. "Leave me! Our paths in life shall cross no more." He grasped her wrist. "Do you dare to reproach me? You! Eugenia, I told you it was life or death." "Life or death!" she repeated. "Death, at any rate, seems made very sweet to you." Still holding her wrist, he looked into her eyes in a strange, hopeless way. He saw nothing in them to help him. He leaned down to her ear. "Yes, death," he said in a solemn whisper; "but the moral and spiritual death comes first." His hand left her wrist. He turned, and without a word strode away. Whither? Even as Tannhauser returned to the Venusberg, so Gerald Leigh returned to his studio and Carlotta. Eugenia wept all the way home. Wept for herself and Gerald. Wept for the shame she had endured. Wept for the uselessness of the contemplated atonement. Wept for the life before her, and for a man's future and career wrecked by her weakness. The next week she married Sir Ralph Norgate. The ceremony was surrounded by befitting splendor. Yet, even at the alter, Gerald Leigh's pale passionate face rose before her, and she knew it would never leave her thoughts. She loved him still! On her wedding morning she received many letters. She had no time to read them, so took them with her, and perused them as she went north with her husband. Among them was one in a strange handwriting; it ran thus: "For your sake he struck me--Carlotta! But he came back to me and is mine again. Him I forgive; not you. We go abroad together to warm, sunny lands. Some day we shall quarrel and part. Then I shall remember you and take my revenge. How? That husband, for whom you deserted Gerald, I shall take from you." Eugenia's lip curled. She tore the letter and threw the pieces out of the carriage window.