"And it is always the same?" Estelle's strong, slim hands were pressed together as though she held something in them that she would not let go. "It is always the same," he said bitterly. "The world--what Esmé calls the world--has dropped us. Somewhere--Heaven knows where--she finds the money to make another for herself. Is always with Cissie de Burgh--a woman glad to know anyone--with her friends the Henley leaders, and Frank Dravelling. Bridge parties, dinners, bitter tempers. I had to go to supper at the Savoy last night to find one table a mass of flowers and fruit, to see Esmé sweeping past her old friends, to hear her laughing too loud, talking for effect, so that they should see she did not care. It was a pretty party, with neither Tommy nor Lord Francis Dravelling quite sober." As Sir Cyril Blakeney believed Esmé to be a thief, so her husband believed firmly now that some man must pay, and that she was too clever to let him find out. Their roads lay apart; they were frigidly friendly, and the depth of Esmé's hurt prevented her asking for an explanation. She did not know why her London turned its head away from her; never guessed that Denise had let her fall under such a vile suspicion--to save herself. Never guessed either why Bertie grew suddenly cold, told her one day that for the future she would still hold his name but no more. Brooding, sore, Esmé's brilliant beauty faded; she lived, clawing at the spiked door which closes the room called right. It was bitter to see her book empty of engagements, to hear the cold "Not at home" of well-drilled butlers, to be left out of bridge at the club. For a time she went there, sitting alone, then it hurt too much; she went no more. As Cain she was tempted to cry out that her punishment was greater than she could bear. "Leave London. Come to Cliff End," Bertie pleaded once. "No! Someone has lied, and I must find out who. No, Bertie, I can find other friends." They were found. Esmé spent money recklessly. Smiled now on people she would not have bowed to. Went to houses whose reputation had endured one of the many smudgings. Played high, and lost and won. Ate grilled bones at six o'clock in the morning, and tried to make it pleasure. Her tongue could trip lightly over well-known names. She was welcome in the new set, which called folly, smartness, and weak vice, life. What was it? A cloak may hide a sore, but the very manner of the concealing chafes the thing it covers. Unpitied, wrongly suspected, Esmé's heart broke as she tore at the locked door. If one could find the backward road--if the Great Powers would give us back the years, seeing as we see now. Lie and scream and bleed, little human, the way is always onward--there are no scissors to cut the false stitches we have made. If she could go back to that careless springtime and do right. Take motherhood as woman's right and joy and pain; guess how she would love the child which then she had dreaded.