Athalie

"Good night," said Athalie.

After she had closed the door and locked it she turned back into the

empty room, moving uncertainly as though scarcely knowing what she was

about. And then, suddenly, the terror of utter desolation seized her,

and for the first time she realised what Clive had been to her, and

what he had not been--understood for the first time in her life the

complex miracle called love, its synthesis, its every element, every

molecule, every atom, and flung herself across the bed, half

strangled, sobbing out her passion and her grief.

Dawn found her lying there; but the ravage of that night had stripped

her of much that she had been, and never again would be. And what had

been taken from her was slowly being replaced by what she had never

yet been. Night stripped her; the red dawn clothed her.

She sat up, dry-eyed, unbound her hair, flung from her the crumpled

negligee. Presently the first golden-pink ray of the rising sun fell

across her snowy body, and she flung out her lovely arms to it as

though to draw it into her empty heart.

Hafiz, blinking his jewelled eyes, watched her lazily from his

pillow.