Presently she grew calmer and sat upon the bed, looking straight before her. Her mind returned upon itself. She seemed to go back to that point of time, just before Lady Cardington called, when she had the programme in her hand and thought of the gossamer threads that were as iron in her life, and in such lives as hers; then to move on to that other point of time when she laid down the programme, sighed, and was conscious of a violent desire for release, for something to come and lift a powerful hand and brush away the spider’s web. But now, returning to this further moment in her life, she asked herself what would be left to her if the spider’s web were gone? The believers in the angel? Perhaps she no longer included Fritz among them. The impotence of his mind seemed to her an impotence of heart just then. He was to her like a numbed creature, incapable of movement, incapable of thought, incapable of belief. Credulity--yes, but not belief. And so, when she looked at the believers, she saw but a few people: Robin Pierce, Sir Donald--whom else? And then she heard, as if far off, the song she would sing on the morrow at Manchester House. “Torna in fior di giovinezza Isaotta Blanzesmano, Dice: Tutto al mondo a vano: Nell’amore ogni dolcezza.” And then she cried again, but no longer frantically; quietly, with a sort of childish despair and confusion. In her heart there had opened a dark space, a gulf. She peered into it and heard, deep down in it, hollow echoes resounding, and she recoiled from a vision of emptiness. * * * * * * *