"I know. You are going to say it is not in the woman, the real woman.

But I say it is. The change is in what, to men, is the real woman. This change has destroyed any feeling my husband may have had for me."

"It could never destroy mine," Sir Donald said quietly.

"Yes, it could--yours especially, because you are a worshipper of beauty, and Fritz never worshipped anything except himself. I am going to let you say good-bye to me without seeing me. Remember me as I was."

"But--what do you mean? You speak as if you would no longer go into the world."

"I go into the world! You haven't seen me, Sir Donald."

She saw an expression of nervous apprehension come into his face as he glanced at her veil.

"What are you going to do, then?" he said.

"I don't know. I--I want a hiding-place."

She saw tears come into his old, faded eyes.

"Hush!" he said. "Don't-"

"A hiding-place. I want to travel a long way off and be quite alone, and think, and see how I can go on, if I can go on."

Her voice was quite steady.

"If I could do something--anything for you!" he murmured.

"You fancy you are still speaking to the woman who sang, Sir Donald."

"Would you--" Suddenly he spoke with some eagerness. "You want to go away, to be alone?"

"Yes, I must."

"Let me lend you Casa Felice!"

"Casa Felice!"

She laughed.

"To be sure; I was to baptise it, wasn't I?"

"Ah, that--will you have it for a while?"

"But you are going there!"

"I will not go. It is all ready. The servants are engaged. You will be perfectly looked after, perfectly comfortable. Let me feel I can do something for you. Try it. You will find beauty there--peace. And I--I shall be on the lake, not far off."

"I must be alone," she said wearily.

"You shall be. I will never come unless you send for me."

"I should never send for you or for anyone."

She did not say then what she would do, but three days later she accepted Sir Donald's offer.

And now she was alone in Casa Felice. She had not even brought her French maid, but had engaged an Italian. She was resolved to isolate herself with people who had never seen her as a beautiful woman.

CHAPTER XIX

LADY HOLME never forgot that first evening at Casa Felice. The strangeness of it was greater than the strangeness of any nightmare.

When she was shut up in her bedroom in London she had thought she realised all the meaning of the word loneliness. Now she knew that then she had not begun to realise it. For she had been in her own house, in the city which contained a troop of her friends, in the city where she had reigned. And although she knew that she would reign no more, she had not grasped the exact meaning of that knowledge in London. She had known a fact but not fully felt it. She had known what she now was but not fully felt what she now was. Even when Fritz, muttering almost terrified exclamations, had stumbled out of the bedroom, she had not heard the dull clamour of finality as she heard it now.

She was an exile. She was an outcast among women. She was no longer a beautiful woman, she was not even a plain woman--she was a dreadful-looking human being.

The Italian servants by whom she was surrounded suddenly educated her in the lore of exact knowledge of herself and her present situation.

Italians are the most charming of the nations, but Italians of the lower classes are often very unreserved in the display of their most fugitive sensations, their most passing moods. The men, especially when they are young, are highly susceptible to beauty in women. They are also--and the second emotion springs naturally enough from the first--almost childishly averse from female ugliness. It is a common thing in Italy to hear of men of the lower classes speak of a woman's plainness with brutality, with a manner almost of personal offence. They often shrink from personal ugliness as Englishmen seldom do, like children shrinking from something abnormal--a frightening dwarf, a spectre.

Now that Lady Holme had reached the "hiding-place" for which she had longed, she resolved to be brutal with herself. Till now she had almost perpetually concealed her disfigured face. Even her servants had not seen it. But in this lonely house, among these strangers, she knew that the inevitable moment was come when she must begin the new life, the terrible life that was henceforth to be hers. In her bedroom she took off her hat and veil, and without glancing into the glass she came downstairs. In the hall she met the butler. She saw him start.

"Can I have tea?" she said, looking at him steadily.

"Yes, signora," he answered, looking down.

"In the piazza, please."

She went out through the open door into the piazza. The boy who had sung in the boat was there, watering some geraniums in pots. As she came out he glanced up curiously, at the same time pulling off his hat. When he saw her his mouth gaped, and an expression of pitiless repulsion came into his eyes. It died out almost instantaneously, and he smiled and began to speak about the flowers. But Lady Holme had received her education. She knew what she was to youth that instinctively loves beauty.

She sat down in a cane chair. It seemed to her as if people were scourging her with thongs of steel, as if she were bleeding from the strokes.

She looked out across the lake.

The butler brought tea and put it beside her. She did not hear him come or go. Behind her the waterfall roared down between the cypresses.

Before her the lake spread out its grey, unruffled surface. And this was the baptism of Casa Felice, her baptism into a new life. Her agony was the more intense because she had never been an intellectual woman, had never lived the inner life. Always she had depended on outward things.

Always she had been accustomed to bustle, movement, excitement, perpetual intercourse with people who paid her homage. Always she had lived for the world, and worshipped, because she had seen those around her worshipping, the body.

And now all was taken from her. Without warning, without a moment for preparation, she was cast down into Hell. Even her youth was made useless to her.

When she thought of that she began to cry, sitting there by the stone balustrade of the piazza, to cry convulsively. She remembered her pity for old age, for the monstrous loss it cannot cease from advertising.

And now she, in her youth, had passed it on the road to the pit. Lady Cardington was a beautiful woman. She pitied herself bitterly because she was morbid, as many beautiful women are when they approach old age.

But she was beautiful. She would always be beautiful. She might not think it, but she was still a power, could still inspire love. In her blanched face framed in white hair there was in truth a wonderful attraction.

Whiteness--Lady Holme shuddered when she thought of whiteness, remembering what the glass had shown her.

Fritz--his animal passion for her--his horror of her now--Miss Schley--their petty, concealed strife--Rupert Carey's love--Leo Ulford's desire of conquest--his father's strange, pathetic devotion--Winter falling at the feet of Spring--figures and events from the panorama of her life now ended flickered through her almost numbed mind, while the tears still ran down her face.

And Robin Pierce?