And what, she asked him, striving with all her might to regain the self-command which could alone enable her to wound him, to get the mastery--what was to be her part in this little comedy? Did he expect _her_ to put up with this charming situation--to take what Marcella Maxwell left? "No," he said abruptly. "You have no right to reproach me or her in any vulgar way. But I recognise that the situation is impossible. I shall probably leave Parliament and London." She stared at him in speechless passion, then suddenly gathered up her fan and gloves and fled past him. He caught at her, and stopped her, holding her satin skirt. "My poor child!" he cried in remorse; "bear with me, Letty--and forgive me!" "I hate you!" she said fiercely, "and I will never forgive you!" She wrenched her dress away; he heard her quick steps across the floor and up the stairs. Tressady fell into a chair, broken with exhaustion. His day in the House of Commons alone would have tried any man's nervous strength; this final scene had left him in a state to shrink from another word, another sound. He must have dozed as he sat there from pure fatigue, for he found himself waking suddenly, with a sense of chill, as the August dawn was penetrating the closed windows and curtains. He sprang up, and pulled the curtains back with a stealthy hand, so as to make no noise. Then he opened the window and stepped out upon the balcony, into a misty haze of sun. The morning air blew upon him, and he drew it in with delight. How blessed was the sun, and the silence of the streets, and the dappled sky there to the east, beyond the Square! After those long hours of mental tension in the crowd and heat of the House of Commons, what joy! what physical relief! He caught eagerly at the sensation of bodily pleasure, driving away his cares, letting the morning freshness recall to him a hundred memories--the memories of a traveller who has seen much, and loved Nature more than man. Blue surfaces of rippling sea, cool steeps among the mountains, streams brawling over their stones, a thousand combinations of grass and trees and sun--these things thronged through his brain, evoked by the wandering airs of this pale London sunrise and the few dusty plains which he could see to his right, behind the Park railings. And, like heralds before the presence, these various images flitted, passed, drew to one side, while memory in trembling revealed at last the best she had--an English river flowing through June meadows under a heaven of flame, a woman with a child, the scents of grass and hawthorn, the plashing of water. He hung over the balcony, dreaming. But before long he roused himself, and went back into the house. The gaudy drawing-room looked singularly comfortless and untidy in the delicate purity of the morning light. The flowers Letty had worn in her dress the night before were scattered on the floor, and the evening paper lay on the chair, where she had flung it down.