All that was now possible! She arranged it hopelessly, drearily, but as satisfactorily as might be under the gods’ dispensation. The door of Paradise was closed to her, she would make purgatory endurable. She had known the poetry of life, now for its prose. But dramatic and artistic fitness demanded that there should be no loose ends, no rough edges, no interfusing and overlapping of incompatible and discordant periods of existence. Her month of soul-fruition was to be a thing apart, a memory, complete, perfect, enshrined in her heart for ever and kept entirely clear of entanglement with the squalid phase of life that she was going to take up again. She was a reluctant but resolved Eurydice returning to the grey neutralities of the Hades from which Orpheus had so nearly rescued her. Ché farò!--She knew the song. What would Orpheus do without Eurydice? Alas!--in her shrewd heart of hearts she knew that Orpheus would do very well. Orpheus loved his Eurydice, but even the legend is compelled to admit that he went harping about the world; and Rivers would go on painting noble pictures and would soon forget her in his work, which even in the heyday of her influence had been paramount with him. She did not allow herself to lose sight of that fact. She knew in her humility and consequent clearness of perception that the idyllic month in the Brignal woods had been her epoch--his episode. Propinquity and a vague sense of responsibility had led him to propose to her. She wished he had given her a ring--a sketch--anything, as a memorial of their sojourn together. She had literally nothing of his but a stump of pencil which he had lent her the day before, and which she had forgotten to return. It was only a stump--she must never permit herself to use it; it must last her her life. She laughed at herself for thinking of this. Rivers would certainly approve of her plan. He had not allowed himself to preach at her, but he would of course wish her to make the best of Mortimer and be a good wife to him henceforward. She would try--but the very thought of Mortimer brought one of her headaches! Driving up Grey Street from the station, she caught sight of various members of her little society. Miss Drummond was picking her way through the perennial mud of this unromantic city, and the poet was holding an umbrella over her. This looked like love--like an engagement! Had they got it settled during her absence? She was disposed to be kind to all lovers, but preferred them of the distressed variety! She would have liked something left to her to do! But there were other lovers and other people in the world. She would begin her Friday “At Homes” again and her friends would muster and she would give them tea, and they would wonder why she looked “different.” There would be a look in her eyes which no one would remember having seen there before, a kind of “Love among the ruins” look, and she would not be able to smile quite so freely.