If she had remained at home that afternoon and continued to practise insensibility, she would probably have followed the line of least resistance during the evening. Or, on the other hand, if she could have been alone, a night's fevered sleeplessness would have caused dull reaction in the morning. The cold contempt for things outside her, which had served for strength, was now gone, leaving a helpless woman to be swayed by passion or led spiritless by convention. The heroic in her needed the double spur. Passion shook her; miserable bondage, claiming her, drove her to rebellion. She rose to sublime heights, undreamed of in her earth-bound philosophy. She had gone into the street after her interview with Jimmie, white, palpitating, torn. Though the man had spoken tremulous words, it was the unspoken, the wave of longing and all unspeakable things in whose heaving bosom they had been caught, that mattered. The Garden of Enchantment had thrown wide its gates; she had been admitted within its infinitely reaching vistas, and flowers of the spirit had bared their hearts before her eyes. Dressing, she strove to kill the memory, to deafen her ears to the haunting music, to clear her brain of the intoxication. A thing hardly a woman, hardly a coherent entity, but half marble, half-consuming fire, stood before Morland, as he clasped the pearl necklace around her throat. The touch of it against her skin caused a shudder. Up to then sensation had blotted out thought. But now the brain worked with startling lucidity. There was yet time to escape from the thraldom. The Idea gathered strength from every word and incident during the meal. The commonness, sordidness, emptiness of the life behind and around and before her were revealed in the unpitying searchlight of an awakened soul.