But when night came, and her maid had left her with her freshly-brushed hair falling over her shoulders, she bent her head forward between the candles that were lighted on each side of her toilet glass. She turned over the masses of her hair, and saw the grey lines here and there among them. Then, and only then, her tears began to fall. They came silently, but irresistibly--not in a torrent of passion, but slowly, blinding her eyes, and causing all those pictures of the past which now came crowding before her, to be blurred. It was a tear-blurred picture that she now saw of Claude Westwood as he had appeared before her eyes on the eve of his departure for Africa--that picture which she had cherished in her heart of hearts through the dreary years. She now failed to see in it any of the features of the man who had been with her that day speaking those wild words about the act of mercy which had been done in regard to the poor wretch who had been found guilty of the murder of Richard Westwood. She had noticed how his eyes had glared with the lust of blood in their depths, as he asked why the wretch had not been either hanged or set free--set free, so that he, Claude, might have a chance of killing him. She shuddered, and covered her face with her hands, as if she were trying to shut out this new picture that came to take the place of the old. Was it her doom, she asked herself, to live for the rest of her days with this new picture ever before her eyes--this picture of the haggard, sun-scorched man, who had come back to civilisation with those deep eyes of his full of the blood-lust of the savage? She picked up his portrait, which he had given her long ago, and which had been her sweetest consolation ever since. She had looked upon it and had kissed it the previous night--every night since he and she had parted. She looked at it now for a few moments.... With a cry she flung it on the floor and trampled upon it; she set her heel upon it, and ground the glass of the frame into the painted ivory. “Wretch--wretch--wretch! Murderer of my youth!” she cried in a low voice, tremulous with passion. “As you have treated me, so shall I treat you. Thank God, I have recovered my womanhood! Thank God!” She gave a laugh as she looked at the fragments at her feet But the second laugh which she gave was not a laugh, but a sob. In a torrent of tears she fell on her knees beside the shattered picture, moaning: “My beloved! Oh, my beloved, forgive me! what have I said? What have I done? Oh, come back to me--come back to me, and we shall be so happy!” Her tears fell on the fragments of ivory and glass as she gathered them off the floor. As she bent forward her hair fell upon them, hiding them from view. She gathered up all carefully and put every scrap she could find into a drawer, clasping her hands and crying once more: “Forgive me--forgive me!”