She felt him approach her and she felt the hands that he laid upon her bare shoulders--one on each side of her neck. She closed her eyes as he put his face down to hers and kissed her on the mouth--not with rapturous, passionate lips, but still with warm and trembling lips. She did not know where the kiss ended, she did not know when his hands were taken off her shoulders. She kept her eyes closed and her mouth sealed. She did not even give him a farewell kiss. When she opened her eyes she found herself alone in the room. And then there came to her ears the sound of the double whistle for a hansom. She stood silently there listening to the driving up of the vehicle--she even heard the sound of the closing of the apron and then the tinkling of the horse’s bells dwindling into the distance. A sense of loneliness came to her that was overwhelming in its force. “Fool! fool! fool!” she cried, through her set teeth. “What have I done? Sent him away? Sent him away? My beloved!--my best beloved--my man of men. Gone--gone! Oh, fool! fool!” She threw herself on a sofa and stared at the Watteau group of masquerading shepherds and shepherdesses on the great Sevres vase that stood on a pedestal near her. The masks at the joining of the handles were of grinning satyrs. They were leering at her, she thought. They alone were aware of the good reason there was for satyrs to grin. A woman had just sent away from her, forever, the bravest man in all the world--those were Phyllis’ words--a king of men--the one man who loved her and whom she loved. She had pretended to him that she was subject to the influences of religion, of honor, of duty! What hypocrisy! They knew it, those leering creatures--they knew that she cared nothing for religion, that she regarded honor and duty as words of no meaning when such words as love and devotion were in the air. She looked at the satyr masks, and had anyone been present in the room, that one would have seen that her lovely face became gradually distorted until the expression it wore was precisely the same as that upon the masks--an expression that had its audible equivalent in the laugh which broke from her. She lay back on her broad cushions. One of the strands of her splendid hair had become loose, and after coiling over half a yard of the brocaded silk of a cushion, twisted its way down to the floor. She lay back, pointing one finger at the face on the vase and laughing that satyr-laugh. “We know--we know--we know!” she cried, and her voice was like that of a drunken woman. “We know all--you and I--we know the hypocrisy--the pretense of religion--of honor--duty--a husband! Ah, a husband! that is the funniest of all--that husband! We know how little we care for them all.”