It is they who must drink the cup to the last dregs of horror and of shame. The unbearable weight is upon them, that is to say, upon tenderness and beauty, on feebleness and Love. Women endure the blows, or cruel words more agonising. They are the meek victims of the Fiend's malice when he enters into those they love. It is womanhood that lies helpless upon the rack for ruthless hands to torture.
Cujus animam geminentem!
—She whose soul groaning, condoling and grieving the sword pierced through!
Saviours sometimes, sufferers always.
Into the "lounge" of the George Hotel came Gilbert Lothian and Dickson Ingworth.
They were well-dressed men of the upper classes. Their clothes proclaimed them—for there will be (unwritten) sumptuary laws for many years in England yet. Their voices and intonation stamped them as members of the upper classes. A railway porter, a duke, or the Wordingham solicitor would alike have placed them with absolute certainty.
They were laughing and talking together with bright, animated faces, and in this masked life that we all lead to-day no single person could have guessed at the forces and tragedies at work beneath.
They sat down in a long room with a good carpet upon the floor, dull green walls hung with elaborate pictures advertising whiskeys, in gold frames, and comfortable leather chairs grouped in threes round tables with tops of hammered copper.
Mr. Helzephron did everything in a most up-to-date fashion—as he could well afford. "The most select lounge in the county" was a minor heading upon the hotel note-paper.