CHAPTER IX.
There are few phases of human existence more interesting than that in which a young and sensitive woman is compelled by circumstances to cast aside the pleasant artifices, the carefully modulated emotions of a sheltered life, and to face the realities of fact and feeling.
For twenty-three years Enid Witcherley had played with existence--toying with it, enjoying it, as an epicure enjoys a rare wine or a choice morsel of food prepared for his appreciation.

Now, as she stood alone in her small drawing-room with its costly decorations, its feminine atmosphere, she was conscious for the first time that the banquet of life is not in reality a display of delicate viands and tempting vintages, but a meal of common bread--sweet or bitter as destiny decrees.

She saw this, and with a flash of comprehension knew and acknowledged that her heart and her brain cried out for the wholesome necessary food.
An hour ago, when the Prophet had stood before her and made his confession, she had been overwhelmed by the tide of her own feelings; in the rush of humiliation and disappointment--in the tremendous knowledge that the image she had called gold was in reality but clay--she had been too mortified to see beyond her own horizon.

In that moment their places in the drama had been indisputably allotted.

She herself had appeared the unoffending heroine, unjustly humiliated in her own eyes and in the eyes of others; he had stood out, in unpardonable guise, the cause--the instrument--of that humiliation.