Never to see him--or speak to him again!--the thought
stirred her imagination, as it were, while it tortured her; there was in
it a certain luxury and romance of pain.
Thus, as she followed Cliffe to his last blood-stained rest, did her
mind sink in dreams of Ashe--and in the dismal reckoning up of all that
she had so lightly and inconceivably lost. Sometimes she found herself
absorbed in a kind of angry marvelling at the strength of the old moral
commonplaces.
It had been so easy and so exciting to defy them. Stones which the
builders of life reject--do they still avenge themselves in the old way?
There was a kind of rage in the thought.
On the way home Kitty expressed a wish to go into St. Mark's alone. Lady
Alice left her there, and in the shadow of the atrium Kitty looked at
her strangely, and kissed her.
An hour after Lady Alice had reached the hotel a letter was brought to
her. In it Kitty bade her--and the Dean--farewell, and asked that no
effort should be made to track her. "I am going to friends--where I
shall be safe and at peace. Thank you both with all my heart. Let no one
think about me any more.
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