She had come at last to the dregs of the cup which once had seemed so sweet and alluring to her senses, and they had poisoned her soul unto death.
She knew that never again while she lived would she be able to face the world and hide her misery beneath a mask of smiles; and the bitterest drop of all, the sharpest thorn in her lacerated heart, was the fact that the little insignificant girl who had once been her hated rival in Rome, should have developed into the peerlessly beautiful woman, whom all men admired and reverenced, and whom Gerald Goddard now idolized.
An hour passed, during which she lay where she had fallen and almost benumbed by her misery.
Then there came a knock upon her door, which was immediately opened, and Mr. Goddard entered the room.
He was still very pale, but grave and self-contained.
The woman started to a sitting posture, exclaiming, in an unnatural voice:
"What do you want here?"
"I have come, Anna, to talk over with you the events of the morning—to ask you to try to control yourself, and look at our peculiar situation with calmness and practical common sense," he calmly replied.
"Well?" was all the response vouchsafed, as he paused an instant.
"I have not come to offer any excuses for myself, or for what you overheard this morning," he thoughtfully resumed; "indeed, I have none to offer—my whole life, I own, has, as Isabel rightly said, been a failure thus far, and no one save myself is to blame for the fact. Do not sneer, Anna," he interposed, as her lips curled back from her dazzling teeth, which he saw were tightly locked with the effort she was making at self-control. "I have been thoroughly humiliated for the first time in my life—I have been made to see myself as I am, and I have reached a point where I am willing to make an effort to atone, as far as may be, for some of the wrongs of which I have been guilty. Will you help me, Anna?"