If only she had sent him that letter, she thought bitterly. She might have fallen in his eyes, but not to those depths. He would have understood. The tremulous hope that his love would remain unclouded had sustained her. If only she could have spoken. A cynical irony seemed to govern the world. She went to the window and looked into the street. A sudden impulse to go out of doors into the open air came over her and as quickly died away. She could not bear to walk along the street or in the public gardens--before hundreds of human eyes. Her soul felt naked and ashamed. If it had been country, where she could have gone and hidden herself in a quiet far-off corner, and laid her face upon the grass, and let the tree-branches whisper to her alone, it would have been different. She shrank from the contact of men and women--and yet her heart sank with a despairing sense of loneliness. The consciousness of it came with a shock, as to one, who, on a North Country fell, suddenly finds himself isolated from outer things by an impenetrable mist. She hurried away from the window, sat down, through sheer physical weariness, on the chair by her writing-table, and buried her face in her hands. A servant brought up a note. A fearful pang shot through her that it might be from Raine. The first glance showed her Hockmaster's handwriting. The envelope bore the printed heading of one of the _cafés_. “If you have any pity, forgive me,”--it ran. “That I told you of my fault is proof of my earnest desire to begin a new life as regards you. I would give years of my life to win a kind word from you. All that was best and straightest in me spoke to you, Kitty. I am intensely miserable.” She crumpled up the note and threw it aside. His misery indeed! She looked at the clock. Half-past eleven. The thought came to her that all her life was to drag along at this pace, endless minutes to each hour. The heat of her resentment against Hockmaster cooled down, but the poignancy of her shame remained. The impulsive hope that had risen at the first sight of the letter left a train of new reflections. How could she ever meet Raine again? She rose once more, and resumed her weary, restless movements about the room. “Never, never!” she cried. “His eyes would kill me--he would be kind--Oh God! I couldn't bear it. I would rather have him curse me! I would rather have him strike me! Oh, Raine, Raine, my darling, my love! I would have told you all--and you would have judged me from my own lips. You would not have put me from you. But this degradation--” She was carrying death in her heart. She could not conceive the survival of his love. Men--unlike women--could not love, when once love had been turned to scorn. If they met, he would be considerate, kind, even pitiful. The thought of his contemptuous pity scorched her. The picture of him rose before her, frank, generous, honourable. She stopped short, as an agitating possibility occurred to her.