With the sunset in their faces they swept through the keen-scented autumn air at the swiftest pace of Kate’s ponies¹. She had given the reins² to Peyton, and he had turned the horses’ heads away from the lake, rising by woody upland lanes to the high pastures which still held the sunlight. The horses were fresh enough to claim his undivided attention, and he drove in silence, his smooth fair profile turned to his companion, who sat silent also.

Kate Orme was engaged in one of those rapid mental excursions which were forever sweeping³ her from the straight path of the actual into uncharted regions of conjecture⁴. Her survey of life had always been marked by the tendency to seek out ultimate relations, to extend her researches to the limit of her imaginative experience. But hitherto she had been like some young captive brought up in a windowless palace whose painted walls she takes for the actual world. Now the palace had been shaken to its base, and through a cleft⁵ in the walls she looked out upon life. For the first moment all was indistinguishable blackness; then she began to detect vague shapes and confused gestures in the depths. There were people below there, men like Denis, girls like herself — for under the unlikeness she felt the strange affinity⁶ — all struggling in that awful coil of moral darkness, with agonized⁷ hands reaching up for rescue. Her heart shrank from the horror of it, and then, in a passion of pity, drew back to the edge of the abyss. Suddenly her eyes turned toward Denis. His face was grave, but less disturbed. And men knew about these things! They carried this abyss in their bosoms⁸, and went about smiling, and sat at the feet of innocence⁹. Could it be that Denis — Denis even — Ah, no! She remembered what he had been to poor Arthur; she understood, now, the vague

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