They were too racked with present suffering to think what the future could contain, or of the growing agony of the long weary days and how they could ever bear them.
"My God, this is past endurance!" Michael exclaimed frantically.

And after a wild embrace, he almost flung her from him.

Then, as she staggered to a sofa she heard the door close, and knew that chapter of her life was done.
She sat there for a while gazing into the fire, too stunned with misery even to think; but presently everything came to her with merciless clearness.

How small she had been all along! Instead of waiting until she heard the truth, she had let a wretched paragraph in a newspaper inflame her wounded vanity, so that she gave her promise to Henry there and then--putting the rope round her neck with her own hands.

And afterwards, instead of being brave and true, wounded vanity again had caused her to tighten the knot.