They were the fragments of a head, which had measured about three inches from brow to chin.
The head, or rather the face, which he had given Eleanor at Nemi! The parting of the hair above the brow was intact--so was the beautiful curve of the cheek.
He knew it--and the likeness to Lucy.

He remembered his words to Eleanor in the garden.

Holding the pieces in his hand, he went slowly back towards the terrace.
Thrown out ?--flung out into the night--by Eleanor?
But why?
He thought--and thought.

A black sense of entanglement and fate grew upon him in the darkness, as he thought of the two women together, in the midnight silence, while he was pacing thus, alone.

He met it with the defiance of newborn passion--with the resolute planning of a man who feels himself obscurely threatened, and realises that his chief menace lies, not in the power of any outside enemy, but in the very goodness of the woman he loves..