“Muriel!” he cried. The protest was too vehement to be convincing. She rose and held out her hand. “I will do all I can for your wife, Captain Hurstly—I am afraid it will be little enough—on one condition”—he waited anxiously—“that you will not attempt to see me again.” “You really mean it?” He spoke slowly, intensely. She never knew afterwards how she kept her hands from trembling. “You have singularly forgotten the little you knew of me if you think I do not mean what I say, Captain Hurstly.” She turned wearily to the door. He compared her in his mind with Edith le Mentier. Muriel was telling him to go away. She had told him to come back. Gladys was only a shadow in his life, a chained shadow; he did not even think of her at this moment. He had never depended on principles or considered consequences. “Good-bye, then, Muriel,” he said. “I suppose I must thank you for your promise, though its condition is terrible to me. You don’t know what you may be driving me to!” “Oh, I’m not driving you,” cried Muriel desperately, the weakness of his nature dawning more fully on her; “drive yourself, Captain Hurstly—drive yourself!” So he went, and was driven by some passion of irresponsibility from Muriel to Edith le Mentier. He found her in. For Muriel there was just earth—weak earth—where her ideal had once made heaven for her. It is not often we are brought into such sharp contact with our broken idols; if it were we should cease to make new ones—and that would be a loss. Muriel stood face to face with the knowledge that she had been a fool—a girl with a dream—lie—hugged to her heart: and God help women who have to realize such dreams in the daylight of facts. All she could find to say was that he was absolutely dead; she had not risen yet to see her deliverance. If the world had been empty before, now it was a blank. Those who die leave a sense of loss, but to know that one we loved has never lived is the greatest and most tragic emptiness of all. Muriel saw failure written over her heart. There was only one thing left: she fell on her knees and offered up her failure. So love passed away from her, but it left her on her knees. CHAPTER XXXIII “The black moments at end, the elements change.” IT was early, and the sunlight with sharp shadows had a chilly and almost stage effect. The sky was dazzling over Notre Dame. Geoffrey Grant sat in the great church, watching the sunbeams catch up and glorify the dust. Worshippers and sightseers slipped in and out, and many candles gleamed. The thought of Muriel had driven him there; and now he was alone with it, he thought half cynically how many had been driven there from the effects of unhappy love affairs, only they had called it aspiration. He at least was honest with himself; he knew it was Muriel.