She peered to right and left.

Almost she saw the glint of the silver on the blue.
Almost, yet not quite.
Sniffing, she passed on, walking as if her feet were angry, each with the other for being before it.

She tweaked at her veil, as she turned and descended the steps.
Hugh glowed and thrilled from head to foot.
At last! Almost---- The sound of a closing door.
Slowly a key turned, grated in the lock, and was withdrawn.
Then--silence.
But at sound of the turning key, the woman in his arms shivered, the slow, cold shudder of a soul in pain; and suddenly he knew that in coming to him she had chosen that which now seemed to her the harder part.
With the first revulsion of feeling occasioned by this knowledge, came a strong impulse to put her from him, to leap down the stairway, force open the heavy door, thrust her into the passage leading to her Nunnery, and shut the door upon her; then go out himself into the world to seek, in one wild search, every possible form of sin and revelry.
But this ungoverned impulse lasted but for the moment in which his passionate joy, recoiling upon himself, struck him a blinding, a bewildering blow.
In ten seconds he had recovered.

His arms tightened more securely around her.
She had come to him.

Whatever complex emotions might now be stirring within her, this fact was beyond question.