about her head. Possibilities which she had been ashamed of harbouring in her mind suddenly leapt out into flaring certainties, and they enveloped her. She could not think as yet coherently or connectedly; wherever she turned her thoughts, a flame flashed in her eyes. All her secret doubts were justified: Bertie had loved this woman; it was she who had called out the notes of his lyre, while she herself was given the shillings and pence—all the small change of the dower of love which he had once showered on Mrs. Emsworth. She could get no further than this; in this circle her thoughts ran round and round, like a squirrel in a revolving cage. Wherever she tried to go, she was still pawing round that one circle; she could get no further; the range of her mental processes was limited to that. And she now knew at once that she had to go on her way, whatever it was, unattended, uncomforted; and even in the exaggerated desolation of these first moments she could make the one resolve that no one, not even her father, should ever know. This her pride imperatively demanded: whatever she had to bear, she would bear in silence. And she could bear anything except pity.
' I want to be fire '—that was explained now, and that he should want that seemed to her an added insult.
' My dear Amelie,' he seemed to say, ' you are a charming girl, but you don't interest me—like that. I wish you did; I really wish you did.'
She bit her under-lip till it was white with the pressure of her teeth, and clasped her hands so tightly in her lap that the sharp facets of the stones in her rings dinted her fingers. The future spelt impossibility. There were hours daily to be gone through with Bertie; what of them? What of the little lover-like caresses that were still constant between them? What, indeed, of the whole tissue of his simulated love—of his wish to be fire? For the moment, whether it was true or not that the acme of his relationship with Mrs.
