He accepted his dismissal, turning without a word. Lady Mary heard that the door had closed. She stood silently for a moment. Then, all that evening, she lay back in her chair stone still. Her eyes were tight shut; but at long intervals a tear was forced from under her lids, and fell insensibly. XXXVI Peter blundered away into the streets, an outcast. He walked furiously about, getting in the way of people who looked for pleasure. He lived again the late encounter. Remotely he saw himself quietly at the feet of Lady Mary, before he had lost his happy peace. Then the storm was loose, and he saw her merely as one to be desired and held. Finally, his imagination inexorably came full circle in the cold shame with which he had left her. He repeated continually the moment when his kisses had gone out, and he knew them for the vulgar gust of his jealousy. Their passion had not been true. Lady Mary had cried in bitter verity. They dishonoured her. Was all the story equally a falsehood? Peter dipped for assurance back into the quiet past. He floated again with Lady Mary under a dying sky, and saw her unattainably fair, with a hand that quietly rested under his. Surely this had been wonderful. Not even the stain of his brutal hunger for her dedicated beauty could destroy it. Why, then, did he so certainly know that his passion to-night was evil? His conscience, bringing him to a reckoning, told him that he did not love her. There was a rift, not to be closed, between his adoration of Lady Mary and the passion with which he had thought to claim her. He put Wenderby aside, and asked himself whether he could ever have taken her by right of a vital need. His imagination would not allow him to do so. He could only see himself for ever kneeling, or delicately touching her as an exquisite privilege. He could not again repeat the physical claim. Mere coveting had prompted it. The soul had perished on his lips. How instantly she had read the quality of his act. Every beat of the quick moment of his taking her was minutely divided in his memory. He felt again her surrender, her expectation of the kiss she could not deny--the farewell moment of her youth to be expiated in years of sacrifice. Then suddenly she had rebelled, feeling the soul go out of him, protesting against her dishonour. Peter quailed to think how he had tortured her. He knew now that Lady Mary loved him. She had been outraged where most she was virginal.