She returned wearily to the thought of Percy Gryce, as a wayfarer picks up a heavy load and toils on after a brief rest.

She was almost sure she had "landed" him: a few days' work and she would win her reward.

But the reward itself seemed unpalatable just then: she could get no zest from the thought of victory.

It would be a rest from worry, no more--and how little that would have seemed to her a few years earlier! Her ambitions had shrunk gradually in the desiccating air of failure.

But why had she failed?
Was it her own fault or that of destiny?
She remembered how her mother, after they had lost their money, used to say to her with a kind of fierce vindictiveness: "But you'll get it all back--you'll get it all back, with your face.".