Across Trafalgar Square, up Waterloo Place, and into the traffic of Piccadilly she was borne with exhilarating speed--the cabman avoiding with extreme dexterity the throng of carriages, motor cars, and omnibuses that seemed momentarily to increase. To Clodagh, sitting rigidly attentive, the scene appeared like an impressive pageant--a pageant of magnificent wealth and abundant prosperity, a splendid, characteristic picture, in which the budding English trees, the imposing English clubs, the gorgeous English equipages, and the beautiful English women made up the background and the central figures. It was the great procession of a life she had seen only in imagination; and as her curious eyes drank in its details, she found herself almost mechanically repeating in her mind the formula to which for the past two months she had clung with passionate persistence. "I _will_ live! I _will_ enjoy!" For the two months this had been her philosophy. Unconsciously, it had been her philosophy since the night in Paris, when, in one hour, her castle of imagination had fallen about her feet, and she had stood, as it were, houseless. In that brief space of time she had realised that she had been inhabiting a fool's paradise. A fool's paradise! The name had seemed curiously apt; and through the long, dark hours of that hateful night her cheeks had burned as she recalled how she had peopled her enchanted realm, while all the time its unconscious creator had forgotten its creation--or remembered it only as one self-righteous act among many. Lady Frances Hope was right! Deerehurst had been right! Barnard had been right! Ideals were a mistake--things made to be shattered, as hopes were made to be broken! To live--to live fully, heedlessly, extravagantly--was the only wisdom. Gore had spoken truly! She had been a fool. She had been wrong in supposing that she had a debt to work off; on the contrary, life was her debtor. It was she who had a score against life! In this fever of mind, she had written the letters that sent Nance on her interrupted journey to America; cancelled her invitation to her aunt and cousin to stay with her in England; and set her own feet on the road to the south. And in the weeks that followed, the same fever had burned in her blood. During the preparations for the Riviera and during the journey to Nice, she had been possessed by a frenzy of energy. She had craved for incessant action and excitement with a pertinacity that had seemed insatiable.