"Good-night, Marianne."
The butler opened the door; she went in. He trotted back, whistling like a boy.
"Wherever have you been, Marianne?" asked Bertha.
"I stayed to dinner at Aunt Constance'."
"I was anxious about you," said Bertha.
But she was glad that Constance had been so gracious.
"Who brought you home?"
"Uncle."
She ran up to her room. She looked in the glass, as though to read her own eyes. There she read her secret:
"God help me!" she thought. "I oughtn't to have gone. I oughtn't to have gone. I was too weak, too weak . . . Oh, if only they had never made it up, Papa and . . . he! . . . Oh dear! I shall never go there again. It's the last time, the last time . . . O God, help me, help me! . . ."
She sank into a chair and sat with her face hidden in her hands, not weeping, her happiness still shedding its dying rays around her, but with a rising agony; and she remained like that for a long time, with her eyes closed, as though she were dreaming and suffering, both.
