"You must pray, dear lady, you must pray." "You'll have to pray for me," Sylvia said. "Always do. Always pray for you. Never less than three prayers every day. Mass once a week." Sylvia felt a lump in her throat; it seemed to her that this friend, accounted mad by the world, had paid her the tenderest and most exquisite courtesy she had ever known. "Come along now, Cassandra," cried the vicar, clapping his hands impatiently to cover his embarrassment. "Where are the flowers? Where are the flowers, you miserable old woman?" Cassandra came up to him, breathing heavily with exertion. "You know, Mr. Dorward, you're enough to try the patience of an angel on a tomb; you are indeed." Sylvia left them arguing all over again about the chrysanthemums. That afternoon she went away from Green Lanes to London. Three months later, she obtained an engagement in a musical comedy company on tour and sent back to Philip the last shred of clothing that she had had through him, with a letter and ten pounds in bank-notes: You _must_ divorce me now. I've not been able to earn enough to pay you back more than this for your bad bargain. I don't think I've given any more pleasure to the men who have paid less for me than you did, if that's any consolation. SYLVIA SCARLETT. CHAPTER VIII Sylvia stood before the looking-glass in the Birmingham lodgings and made a speech to herself: "Humph! You look older, my dear. You look more than nineteen and a half. You're rather glad, though, aren't you, to have finished with the last three months? You feel degraded, don't you? What's that you say? You don't feel degraded any more by what you've done now than by what you did when you were married? You consider the net result of the last three months has simply been to prove what you'd suspected for a long time--the wrong you did yourself in marrying Philip Iredale? Wait a minute; don't go so fast; there's something wrong with your moral sense. You know perfectly well your contention is impossible; or do you accuse every woman who marries to have a position and a home of being a prostitute? Ah, but you didn't marry Philip for either of those reasons, you say? Yes, you did--you married him to make something like Arbour End." Tears welled up in Sylvia's eyes. She thought she had driven Arbour End from her mind forever.