Many emotions stirred Pamela while she waited through the sunny warmth of the summer day for Dare's return. The horror of the morning had passed. She was quite collected now, and able to dwell dispassionately on the changed life that confronted her. Dare had told her, and she had inclined to believe him, that only love mattered. Now, while she sat alone, thinking quietly, and reviewing all her past life as it stood in relation to the future, she realised that love is not the principal factor in life; it is merely a beautiful adornment, a quality which tends to gladden, and sometimes to ennoble, life; but it is not the base on which the structure is supported. Love is a separate emotion, a distinctly personal attribute. Of itself it is frankly selfish. Only when it teaches self-abnegation can it be termed a wholly beautiful thing. To sacrifice everything for love, is to lower love to a purely physical emotion; and love stripped of its spiritual element becomes an ephemeral passion, a thing of mean delights, an excitement, a quality shorn of all fineness and dragged down to the commonplace of physical necessity. That was the quality of the love she had known in her married life; and that was why to-day, when she needed the strength of love to support her, nothing of it remained but the gaunt spectre of a long dead passion. But to love warmly and intensely, in a quite human fashion--and to part! ... That was not easy. It made a greater demand on her fortitude than anything she had yet been faced with. But difficulties met courageously present the weapons for their own defeat. The power of conquest comes of the determination to conquer. When Dare returned, and came up to the balcony in search of her, he discovered her, as he believed, asleep. She was sitting so still, with closed eyes, and was so deeply plunged in thought that she did not hear him until he was close upon her. Then her eyelids flashed open abruptly, and a flush suffused the pallor of her cheeks. "I've only got a minute," he said, pausing in front of her. "The taxi is waiting. Come inside, Pamela. We can't part here." She was seated outside the windows of her room, and she rose as he spoke and entered the room without answering him. He followed her quickly. "I've been seeing to things," he said. "I'll write you. There isn't time to go into it now. But it will be all right. Don't bother your head about anything until you hear from me." He held her by the shoulders and looked steadily into her eyes. "It won't be long before I'm back. But this is our real parting. This is the last time I shall hold you so,--the last time I shall kiss your lips... my dear!"