"Tired of it? After only three years? There are some of my flock who have been going round in the same witches' dance for a quarter of a century, and are still in the crowd on the Brocken. I can but think you have made the pace too fast since your second marriage, or perhaps it is your husband who has made the pace." "You must not think that. We both like the same things. We are companions now as we were when I was a child at Disbrowe Park, and when we were so happy together." Her eyes filled with tears. Oh, how far away that time of innocent gladness seemed, as she looked back! What an abyss yawned between then and now. "I have distressed you," the priest said gently, taking her hand. "No, no, but it is always painful to look back." Father Hammond drew her towards the sofa by the open window, and seated himself at her side. "Let us have a real friendly talk now I have been so lucky as to find you alone," he said. "I am glad--very glad--that you are tired of the whirlpool, for to be tired of a bad kind of life is the beginning of a better kind of life. You know what I think of modern Society, especially in its feminine aspect, and how I have grieved over the women who were made for better things than the witches' dance. We have talked of these things in your first husband's lifetime, but then I thought you were taking your frivolous pleasures with a careless indifference that showed your heart was not engaged in them, and that you had a mind for higher things. Even your dabbling with Mr. Symeon's quasi-supernatural philosophy was a sign of superiority. His disciples are not the basest or most empty-headed among worldlings, though they keep touch with the world. In those days you know I had hopes of you, but since you have been Claude Rutherford's wife, I have seen you given up to an insatiate love of pleasure, a headlong pursuit of every new thing, the more extravagant and the more dangerous the more hotly pursued by you and your husband; so that it has become a byword, 'If the thing is to cost a fortune, and to risk a life, the Rutherfords will be in it.'" "Claude is impetuous, easily caught by novelty," she said deprecatingly, with lowered eyelids. "He was not always so impetuous, rather a loiterer, indifferent to all strenuous pleasures, delighting in all that is best in literature, and worshipping all that is best in art, though too idle to achieve excellence even in the art he loved. But since his marriage--and forgive me if I say since his command of your wealth--he has changed and degenerated." "You are not complimentary to his wife," Vera said, with a faint laugh.