Fate had played for her; Fate and not she was the heroine. Katherine felt herself struck down from her masterly eminence, saw herself reduced to a miserable position, a tool with the other tools--Peter and Hilda. To see Hilda thus was an undreamed-of shattering of ideals and pierced even her own humiliation, for Katherine almost unconsciously had looked up to Hilda. She was to use her, play her game with her, but for Hilda's own advantage; she, not Fate, was to put her in Peter's arms, unspotted and innocent of the combinations that had led her there. All Katherine's plans in England had prospered and, in Paris, a nobly frank part awaited her. Avowal to Peter of incompatibility, her generous perception of his love for Hilda--a brave, manlike part--to which she had looked forward as to an atonement for the ulterior motives. And Katherine had almost persuaded herself that there would be little acting needed. Had she not seen, guessed, the truth? Had the truth not pained her, humiliated her? Had she not risen finely above her pain and wished them happiness? In moments of self-scorn, the ulterior motives, her own cautious look before leaping, had filled her with impatient scorchings, and Katherine could scorch herself as well as others in the pitiless flame of clear-sighted analysis. But was her own rebellion from the irksome standards of a higher nature--a rebellion that had carried her into such opposition as to fall below herself to a hard matter-of-fact ambition, touched with a sense of revenge upon her own disappointment,--was that rebellion, that ambition, so base, so pitiful? Perhaps even the clearest analysis becomes sophistical if carried too far, and Katherine found excuses that explained for herself. But now all was base, all pitiful, and she, in contrast with Hilda's fall, had risen. On this lowered platform, the advantage was hers, terribly hers, and it was good, good to lose self-scorn in her scorn for them. She laid down her wrap on a table and began to slowly draw off her gloves. "My return was inopportune." The icy steadiness of her voice pleased her own sense of fitness. "Or opportune?" She directed her eyes upon Odd, and indeed his attitude assumed all the ignobility of the situation. He welcomed responsibility; to heap shame upon his own head was all he prayed for. With a kind of desperate sincerity he kept his arm around Hilda, and almost defiantly he had placed himself before her; he felt that Hilda's look of frozen horror gave him the advantage. "Opportune, Katherine," he said; "now at least I shall not have to lie to you. You can see the whole extent of my baseness." "Such sudden baseness too. How long have we been engaged?" It was good to turn on him those daggers of her own humiliation; to feel his disloyalty justify hers, nay, more than justify, give absolution, for she had not been disloyal, thinking he loved her.