A cumulative family veto promptly negatived this mad resolve, and Ermengarde's sum total for the single journey leapt up accordingly, till, what with booking fees, registrations, insurances, tips, and those supplemental charges that bristle all over Continental time-tables, it doubled her original estimate, and she began to think that, if hotel expenses bounded up in the same proportion, it might be the more prudent course to stay at home. But the very word home came with a shock that showed the impossibility of that course. She must forget certain things, and grow accustomed to certain daily deepening pangs, and steep her thoughts in other atmospheres, and so take breath and strength for the newer, darker aspects of life confronting her. Especially she must forget the experience of a certain dark and dreadful night. On that occasion she had dined at her father's house, and growing weary of the musical evening that followed, and eschewing the delights of bridge in a dim and distant room clandestinely devoted to that pastime, had cabbed quietly home at eleven and let herself in with a latchkey. The house was silent; the servants evidently had gone to bed; a candle and matches under a still burning gas-bracket awaited her; but the light under the study door showed that the master of the house had come home, presumably to the heavy evening's work that had been his excuse for not dining at Onslow Gardens. Thinking to just let him know she was in, without interrupting his work, she stepped softly to the study, and as softly opened the door and looked in. The room was partly in shadow, lighted by fire-gleams. Over the writing-table was a shaded lamp, in the interrupted light of which she saw the slender, bowed figure of a woman sitting, with her face hidden by her hands. Beside her, and bending slightly over her, stood Arthur, his face in shadow, his hand on her shoulder, which quivered with restrained sobs; he was speaking in a low, earnest voice words inaudible at the door at the other end of the room. For a moment Ermengarde stood at gaze, transfixed, a curious strangling sensation in her throat, and a feeling like hot wires burning her eyes. Then, very softly, almost unconsciously, she closed the door, and, after a moment's pause, turned, carefully gathering up her skirts from their silken rustle on the floor, and went to the table, whence she took the unlighted candle, and walked upstairs with a slow, tired step and a strange proud quiver of lips. Presently she heard the street door opened, the shrilling of a cab-whistle and answering trot of a horse, some murmured voices, followed by hoof-beats dying away, and the sound of shutting the door, bolts driven, and chain put up. Half an hour later the study door, opening, let out the scent of a cigar, and Arthur came up.