Two minutes later Anne and Lutie were alone. The former, inwardly shaken despite an outward appearance of composure, declined to remain for luncheon, as she had done the day before. Her interest in Lutie and her affairs was lost in the contemplation of a reviving sense of self- gratification, long dormant but never quite unconscious. She had recovered almost instantly from the shock produced by his violent command, and where dismay had been there was now a warm, grateful rush of exultation. She suspected the meaning of that sudden, fierce lapse into rudeness. Her heart throbbed painfully, but with joyous relief. It was not rudeness on his part; on the contrary he was paying tribute to her. He was dismayed by the feelings he found himself unable to conquer. The outburst was the result of a swift realisation that she still had the power to move him in spite of all his mighty resolves, in spite even of the contempt he had for her. She walked to the Ritz. It was a long distance from George's home, but she went about it gladly in preference to the hurried, pent-up journey down by taxi or stage. She wanted to be free and unhampered. She wanted to think, to analyse, to speculate on what would happen next. For the present she was content to glory in the fact that he had unwittingly betrayed himself. She was near the Plaza before the one great, insurmountable obstacle arose in her mind to confound her joyous calculations. What would it all come to, after all? She could never be more to him than she was at this instant, for between them lay the truth about the death of Templeton Thorpe,—and Templeton Thorpe was her husband. Her exaltation was short- lived. The joy went out of her soul. The future looked to be even more barren than before the kindly hope sprang up to wave its golden prospects before her deluded eyes. He would never look at the situation from her point of view. Even though he found himself powerless to resist the love that was regaining strength enough to batter down the wall of prejudice her marriage had created in his mind, there would still stand between them his conviction that it would be an act of vileness to claim or even covet the wife of the man whose life he had taken, not in anger or reprisal but in honest devotion.