He would tire of her and neglect her.

And what would be left for Lucy--Lucy the upright, simple, profound--but heartbreak?
Eleanor paused absently in front of the glass, and then looked at herself with a start of horror.

That face--to fight with Lucy's! On the dressing-table there were still lying the two terra-cotta heads from Nemi, the Artemis, and the Greek fragment with the clear brow and nobly parted hair, in which Manisty had seen and pointed out the likeness to Lucy.

Eleanor recalled his words in the garden--his smiling, absorbed look as the girl approached.
Yes!--it was like her.

There was the same sweetness in strength, the same adorable roundness and youth.
And that was the beauty that Eleanor had herself developed and made doubly visible--as a man may free a diamond from the clay.
A mad impulse swept through her--that touch of kinship with the criminal and the murderer that may reveal itself in the kindest and the noblest.
She took up the little mask, and, reaching to the window, she tore back the curtains and pushed open the sun-shutters outside.
The night burst in upon her, the starry night hanging above the immensity of the Campagna, and the sea.