Yet, as he heard the door of the neighbouring room open and the sound of her quick footsteps, the hot blood rushed to his face, his pulses beat faster with the hope kindled to something that was almost a joyous certainty. She was coming to him. He would see her standing irresolute before him, and he would take her in his arms and by the strength of an unconquerable love draw her back over the tide which was flowing faster and broader between them. It was impossible that he should lose her, impossible that the outward circumstances of their lives should be stronger than themselves and what had been best in them—their love. Even when the footsteps stopped and he remained alone, the impossibility, absurdity of it all was still predominant over despair. He rose and pulled open the door. He had no clear conception of any plan. He was so sure that the moment they stood face to face she would understand everything by some miracle of sympathy, the very thought of an "explanation" was a sacrilege against the power with which he felt himself possessed. "Nora!" he cried joyfully. "Nora!" She stood immediately opposite him. Her hat had been flung recklessly on the table, and her hair was disordered, her face white and drawn. She made no answer to his greeting. Her eyes met his with no light in their depths. They were sombre, black, and sullen. "Nora!" he repeated, and already the note of triumph had died out of his voice. "What is the matter?" She came at once to him, taking his hands, not in affection but in a sort of feverish despair. "Wolff," she said, "I want to go away from here—I want to go home!" The moment of hope and enthusiasm was over. Something mysteriously cold and paralysing had passed like an icy breath over his self-confidence and changed it to a frigid despair. He could not even plead with her, nor tell her of the love which he felt for her nor of the pain which he suffered. Everything lay at the bottom of his heart a dead, frozen weight. He loosened her hands from his arm and forced her gently into a chair. "You want to go away?" he said quietly. "Why?" "Because I hate this place and—and every one." "Does that include your home and your husband, Nora?" She laughed wildly. "My home! This isn’t my home: it never has been. I have always been a stranger—an exile here. Everything is foreign to me—everything hateful. If you were twenty times my husband, I should say it. I loathe and detest this country and I loathe and detest your people. I am English. I was mad, mad, mad to believe I could ever be anything else!" She was hysterical with fatigue and excitement, and scarcely conscious of what she was saying. But Wolff, who knew nothing of what had happened at the parade, heard in her words a deliberate and final declaration. "If you hate my country and my people, you must hate me," he said. "Has it come to that already?" She sprang to her feet as though goaded by some frightful inner torment.