Her slender arms tightened about his neck; he could feel, from the whole abandonment of her attitude and the slight weight of her childish form, how little fitted she was physically for the squalid ordeal of the law-courts. If she could live at all through horrors of the kind, it would have to be by a miracle. And has one the right to hope for miracles where the question of happiness or unhappiness in human love is the egoistic point at stake? But, right or no right, there was in them both that supreme and fatal force of affection which, if it be unusual, is at least usual enough to be at the root of most mortal tragedies. "I am tired or being brave," she repeated. "I want to rest." In the mirror opposite them he saw the reflection of the bright garden outside. How calm and still it seemed! Had he wandered there, years before, with a beating heart, in search of his destiny, merely to find it at last after the humiliation of a public scandal? Had his idyllic, almost mystical romance, with all its aspirations, grace, and unspeakable strength, been given to him just to be called from the house-tops and discussed in the streets? Was this the end of all sublime ideals? Did every delicate, secret sentiment have to endure, soon or late, the awful test of degradation and mockery? Did it have to come--this terrible day of trial when the Love which moves the sun and the other stars had to pass through the common sieve with dust, ashes, and much that was infinitely viler? No, he told himself, no: ten thousand times, no.