After an hour or two she rose and put on her wrapper and slippers. The turmoil within her was so intense that she could not keep still, and prowled, a tall, swathed form, from one room to the other. It seemed then that there never had been a thrill--nothing but this repulsion, this repudiation, nothing but a desire to be back where she belonged. She fought it, less for love of Mayer than for shame at her own backsliding. She saw herself a coward, lacking the courage to take her life boldly, renouncing the man who had her promise. That held her closer to her resolve than any other consideration; her troth was plighted. Could she now--the wedding ring almost on her finger--turn and run crying for home like a child frightened of the dark? But she didn't want to, she didn't want to! She seemed to see Mayer with a new clearness; glimpsed, to her own dread, his compelling power. He was her master, someone she feared, someone who could make her at one moment feel proud and glad, and at another small and trivial and apologetic. A majestic figure, a woman built on the grand plan, poor Chrystie paced through the silent rooms, weeping like a lost baby. When the dawn began to grow pale she went to the bedroom window and pulled up the blinds. Like a place of dreams the city slowly grew into solidity through the spectral light. It was as gray as her mood, all color subdued, walls and roofs and chimneys an even monochrome, above them in the sky an increasing, thin, white luster. The air stole in chill as the prospect and from the street beyond rose the sound of a footfall, enormously distinct, echoing prodigiously, as if it was the only footfall left in the world and the sound of the others--refused individual existence--had concentrated in that one to give it volume. Chrystie drew up a chair and sat down. There with swollen eyes and leaden heart she waited for the day. CHAPTER XXIX LORRY SEES THE DAWN Chrystie's manner on her departure had disturbed Lorry. As she dressed for the opera that night she pondered on it, and back from it to the change she had noticed in the girl of late. She hadn't been like the old, easy-going Chrystie; her indolent evenness of mood had given place to a mercurial flightiness, her gay good-humor been broken by flashes of temper and morose silences.