even more strenuous. She slipped away from Mrs. Benton, who was staying the night with the Boltons, and she entered the hotel by the side door.
The whole house was ablaze with light and excitement except at the public bars, which in accordance with the law were all in darkness.
As she went up the stairs she stopped electrified. A clear tenor voice rang out above the din, singing a toast. It was followed by a little lull before the tumult drowned it out again.
For a moment she felt a sense of shock and she could not move. Then she went on into her room and stood again in the middle of it, listening. She was no longer weary. She was feverishly alive, burning with hurts, resentments, and futile determinations. She did not know why she was hurt, what she was resentful at, or what she was determined to do. She stood by the window for some minutes till these clashing pains diminished a little.
It took her some time to get hold of herself, and then she told herself she was a fool. There was hardly a man in the town who might not be excused for letting go that night. Mrs. Benton had left Roger to the overwhelming pressure of the occasion without a sign that it worried her. But still she could not bear to think of Dane as drunk. It hurt him more than it hurt other men. She felt he hated himself afterwards, that he could not take it lightly as others did. But she told herself the main trouble was her own imagination, which could not bear to visualize him degenerated in any way from the beautiful thing he was to her when he was well. She could not bear, either, the clouding in any shape or form of the spirit that was in him. It was her sense of beauty, rather than her code of behaviour, that was offended. But her sense of beauty was perhaps the strongest thing about her. It
