you good. Or go up and have a chat with mother, eh? You will find her in the drawing-room. She would like to read you Lucy's last letter, I know. It's downright clever."
Agnes shook her head, stammered excuses in a voice that sounded strange in her own ears, and left him.
He had cut her dead; Jack, the man she worshipped. The only man who had ever taken her in his arms and kissed her; the only man by whom she ever wished to be kissed and held. In broad daylight, openly, before witnesses, he had cut her.
Mr. de Souchy had seen what had happened; he had understood; he had pitied her.
An illumination came; Jack was ashamed of her. Because she had shaken hands with the old man, he was ashamed to recognise her before his new friends. She was connected with trade; a child of trade; and he was now received among the Sixties.
A profound humiliation overpowered her, sapped the rest of her strength. The glare of the sun was so intolerable . . . how she longed to be at home, to be in darkness.
She discovered that in her preoccupation she had taken the wrong turning. She hurried back, but the market clock showed seven minutes past three. The omnibus must be half-way up Constitution Hill by now.
There was nothing to do but to walk, as she had walked in the morning. She set out with automatic endurance.
When you get out of the last bit of shadow of the town, and, steeply climbing, reach the level top of the hill, you have before you a long unsheltered stretch of road before you come to the trees of St. Gilles. It is white and dusty underfoot; sun-parched fields lie on either hand; and in July there is a blazing sky above, to the left a blazing sea.
It seemed to Agnes that the sun was darting his rays straightinto
