When the girl's grateful arms suddenly flung themselves about her, Norma was further on the road to happiness than she had ever travelled before. She yielded herself to the moment's exquisite charm. Behind her whirled a tumult of longing, shame, struggling faith, nameless suspicion. Before her loomed a shivering dread. The actual moment was an isle of enchanted peace. The clock on a table at the far end of the room chiming six brought her back to the workaday world. She must go home. Morland was coming to dinner; also one or two Cosford people, who had already arrived in town in view of the wedding. She would have to dress with some elaborateness. Her heart grew heavy and cold at the prospect of the dreary party. She rose, looked again at the picture in the fading light. Moved by the irresistible, she turned to Aline. “I should like to see him--to thank him--before---before Wednesday. Do you think he would come?” Aline blushed guiltily. “Jimmie is in the house now,” she said. “Downstairs?” “Yes.” For a moment irresolute, she looked vacantly into the girl's pleading eyes. An odd darkness encompassed her and she saw nothing. The announcement was a shock of crisis. Dimly she knew that she trod the brink of folly and peril. But she had been caught unawares, and she longed stupidly, achingly, for the sight of his face. The words of Aline, eager in defence of her beloved, seemed far away. “Of course he does n't know you are here. He was to call for me at a quarter to six, and I heard the front door open a little while ago. I brought the picture in a cab, and he is under the impression that Mrs. Deering will ask you to--will do what I have done. Jimmie is perfectly innocent, Miss Hardacre. He had not the remotest idea I was to meet you--not the remotest.” Norma recovered herself sufficiently to say with a faint smile: “So this has been a conspiracy between you and Connie Deering?” Aline caught consent in the tone, and ignored the question. “Shall I send him up to you?” she asked breathlessly. “Yes,” said Norma. There was a girl's glad cry, a girl's impulsive kiss, and Norma was left alone in the room. She had yielded. In a few moments he would be with her--the man who had said, “Her voice haunts me like music heard in sleep... I worship her like a Madonna... I love her as the man of hot blood loves a woman... My soul is a footstool for her to rest her feet upon,” and other flaming words of unforgettable passion; the man for whom one instant of her life had been elemental sex; the man whose love had transfigured her on canvas into the wonder among women that she might have been; the man standing in a slough of infamy, whose rising vapours wreathed themselves into a halo about his head. She clenched her hands and set her teeth, wrestling with herself. “My God! What kind of a fool am I becoming?” she breathed.