Though all his approaches to her heart were foreordained to failure, she had been disposed to retain a certain spark of respect for him; now this was extinguished because of the discovery she had made about the message from Rome. In its place there burned a detestation of the man which every hour intensified. She realised that his was not a character to accept, even to perceive, that her attitude was, after all, just toward him, surveying it, as she did, in the light of their pre-nuptial agreement. Her blame of him, in consequence, was not so large as her commiseration of self for having been so weak as to heed other counsels than those of her heart. With the feeling that she had wronged herself was compounded a fear that she had wronged Tarsis as well. But the idea of surrender had never crossed her mind. Reason had no play here; it was merely the intuitive firmness of a fine and wholesome soul, for whom real marriage could never be aught but a profound and moral naturalism; a loving union between man and woman such as the name of Mario Forza conjured up, ardent with a sense of the infinite--the apotheosis of a hallowed passion. When the duplicity of Tarsis was laid bare she had known an impulse to leave his house, to release herself from an obligation he had imposed upon her by deceit. But she listened for the moment to a less selfish voice, and decided to accept the events of her ill-starred wedding--to endure, suffer silently, even stolidly, all that it should entail. She felt so alone. To her father she would not go; his was a nature to be relieved of care, not one to be asked to share it. As to Aunt Beatrice, try as she did, Hera could not think of her except as the projector of the trouble, well meaning as her purpose may have been. There was only one heart that could give sympathy, only one fellow-being that called to her, and to this one she might not go, in his counsel she might not seek guidance. Nevertheless, chance brought them together one morning in the garden of the General Hospital. Every week Hera sent roses there, and it was on Flower Day, as it had come to be known, that she met Mario in the director’s office. Soon they found themselves walking in the garden, he telling of a plan he had for a hospital where soldiers fallen on the industrial field might be cared for until restored for the struggle. “I come as a student,” he explained. “It is my second visit this week. The organisation here has no superior in Europe, and in many respects we shall take it as our model.” “In what respect will you not take it?” she asked, as they passed a broad lawn where pale men and women sat in the sun. “In our dealing with such as those,” he answered, indicating the convalescents. “They seem to be dealt with kindly,” she observed. “They look contented.”