“You don’t want me?” she said, with the husky accent which came into her voice when she had been drinking a good deal. “No,” said Alistair, puzzled. “Then good-bye.” She held out a beringed hand, and Alistair took it nervously, inly afraid of a scene. Then he went without looking back. It was midnight before he let himself into the little art kitchen in Beers Cooperage, and saw by the light of the match which he had struck to show him the way upstairs a white envelope lying on the floor. The flap bore the printed name of the hotel in which he had dined that night, and he tore it open, with a sensation of knowing all about it, and having expected it all along. “DEAR ALISTAIR” (said the shaky, badly-formed writing within), “It is no good. You don’t want me, and it will never be any better. I have gone abroad with Mr. Mendes, and you can get a divorce as soon as you like. “MOLLY FINUCANE. “P.S.--You are a fool if you don’t marry Hero Vanbrugh.” CHAPTER XXIII A PERSONAL EXPLANATION THE great Puritan Queen lay dead--dead, after sixty-three years of unexampled prosperity and glory. For her, and in her name, heroes had conquered and statesmen had annexed; laureates had hymned her in exquisite verse; discoverers had written her name on the map of new continents and carried it to the mysterious sources of old Nile. On her the farthest East had showered barbaric pearl and gold, and new realms had come forth out of the desert to hail her Queen. The last Protestant Queen lay dead. And before the warmth of life had ebbed away two hands were lifted to rend the veil of the world’s reverence. One of these hands affixed a paper to her Palace walls, proclaiming that she had been a usurper; the other boasted in the public press that she had been interred with a Catholic emblem upon her breast. Both hands were guided, consciously or unconsciously, by the same motive power. Both actions were symbolical. The mysterious process of the rise and fall of nations is worked out by and through the change of minds. The Victorian Age had passed away before Victoria herself. And her end had been hastened and embittered by the opening revelations of the anti-Puritan war. The last man in England who was likely to read aright the signs of the times, and perceive the true trend of contemporary history was the man who, naturally enough, found himself occupying the post of Home Secretary.