 was bawled at his heels as he walked off with his long
stride, unceremoniously leaving the pursy gentleman of sixty to settle with his
cabman far to the rear.
 

                                 Chapter XXXIV

   In Which It Is Darkly Seen How the Criminal's Judge May Be Love's Criminal

When we are losing balance on a precipice we do not think much of the thing we
have clutched for support. Our balance is restored and we have not fallen; that
is the comfortable reflection: we stand as others do, and we will for the future
be warned to avoid the dizzy stations which cry for resources beyond a common
equilibrium, and where a slip precipitates us to ruin.
    When, further, it is a woman planted in a burning blush, having to idealize
her feminine weakness, that she may not rebuke herself for grovelling, the mean
material acts by which she sustains a tottering position are speedily swallowed
in the one pervading flame. She sees but an ashen curl of the path she has
traversed to safety, if anything.
    Knowing her lover was to come in the morning, Diana's thoughts dwelt wholly
upon the way to tell him, as tenderly as possible without danger to herself,
that her time for entertaining was over until she had finished her book;
indefinitely, therefore. The apprehension of his complaining pricked the memory
that she had something to forgive. He had sunk her in her own esteem by
compelling her to see her woman's softness. But how high above all other men her
experience of him could place him notwithstanding! He had bowed to the figure of
herself, dearer than herself, that she set before him: and it was a true figure
to the world; a too fictitious to any but the most knightly of lovers. She
forgave; and a shudder seized her. - Snake! she rebuked the delicious run of
fire through her veins; for she was not like the idol woman of imperishable
type, who are never for a twinkle the prey of the blood: statues created by
man's common desire to impress upon the sex his possessing pattern of them as
domestic decorations.
    When she entered the room to Dacier and they touched hands, she rejoiced in
her coolness, without any other feeling or perception active. Not to be unkind,
not too kind: this was her task. She waited for the passage of commonplaces.
    »You slept well, Percy?«
    »Yes; and you?«
    »I don't think I even dreamed.«
    They sat. She noticed the cloud on him and waited for his allusion to it,
anxious concerning him simply.
