Nora sighed. She was feeling very tired and possibly slightly depressed. In truth, she was very often depressed in that hour which divided the close of her day’s duties and Wolff’s return, and sometimes there was even a touch of irritability in her depression. The constant round of "teas," the constant meeting of the same people, the constant repetitions, the unfailing discussions on _Dienst_ and _Dienstangelegenheiten_ wearied her to exasperation. Some of the women she liked, some she tolerated, some she hated; but, hated or loved or tolerated, these women formed her "circle," from which there was no possible escape. On the whole, she bore the burden of their good-natured dullness with apparent equanimity, so that Frau von Seleneck had told her, with the satisfaction of a successful monitor, that she was really "one of them." But there were also moments when weariness overcame her determined courage, and only the rallying-cry "For Wolff’s sake" could bring light to her eyes. They were for the most part lonely moments, when she wandered about the tiny flat seeking some occupation which would help to pass the time till Wolff’s return, or when _Kriegspiel_ carried him away in the evenings and left her to solitude, a vague home-sickness—and fear. For fear had not been altogether banished from Nora’s life, though she held it under with a firm hand. It haunted her now as she sat there watching the lights spring up in the windows opposite; it asked her what had happened, and what might still happen; it reminded her of the man she had deceived. No, not deceived. After all, she had offered her life, not her love, to Robert Arnold, because he had needed her, and because she in her turn had needed him as a barrier between herself and the man she really loved. When the barrier had proved useless she had flung it aside, and she knew that if she could live over again that hour when Wolff von Arnim had come to her with love and happiness in his hands, she would not act otherwise than she had done. And to Robert Arnold she had offered the one possible atonement—she had told him the truth. He had not answered her, and she had tried to put him out of her life, regretfully and remorsefully, as a friend whom she had wronged beyond forgiveness. Nevertheless, the power to forget had not been granted her. Memory, like some old mythological Fury seeking an expiatory sacrifice, haunted her and would haunt her, as she knew, until such time as the sacrifice was paid. And the sacrifice was a confession to her husband—an impossibility, since her lips were sealed by a lie and by the fear of losing that which was most precious to her—his love.