Turning at length from the consideration of this figure, she asked herself whether, if with her present knowledge she had her choice to make over again, she would have chosen differently.  The answer was a startling negative.  She loved him.  Incomprehensible, unreasonable, and un reasoning sentiment!  That she had received a wound, she knew; whether it were mortal, or whether it would heal and leave a scar, she could not say.  One salient, awful fact she began gradually to realize, that if she sank back upon the pillows she was lost.  Little it would profit her to save her body.  She had no choice between her present precarious foothold and the abyss, and wounded as she was she would have to fight.  There was no retreat: 

She sat up, and presently got to her feet and went to the window and stared through the panes until she distinguished the blue whiteness of the fallen snow on her little balcony.  The night, despite the clouds, had a certain luminous quality.  Then she drew the curtains, searched for the switch, and flooded the room with a soft glow—­that beautiful room in which he had so proudly installed her four months before.  She smoothed the bed, and walking to the mirror gazed intently at her face, and then she bathed it.  Afterwards she opened her window again, admitting a flurry of snow, and stood for some minutes breathing in the sharp air.

Three quarters of an hour later she was dressed and descending the stairs, and as she entered the library dinner was announced.  Let us spare Honora the account of that repast or rather a recital of the conversation that accompanied it.  What she found to say under the eyes of the servants is of little value, although the fact itself deserves to be commended as a high accomplishment; and while she talked, she studied the brooding mystery that he presented, and could make nothing of it.  His mood was new.  It was not sullenness, nor repressed rage; and his answers were brief, but he was not taciturn.  It struck her that in spite of a concentration such as she had never in her life bestowed on any other subject, her knowledge of him of the Chiltern she had married—­was still wofully incomplete, and that in proportion to the lack of perfection of that knowledge her danger was great.  Perhaps the Chiltern she had married was as yet in a formative state.  Be this as it may, what she saw depicted on his face to-night corresponded to no former experience.

They went back to the library.  Coffee was brought and carried off, and Honora was standing before the fire.  Suddenly he rose from his chair, crossed the room, and before she could draw away seized and crushed her in his arms without a word.  She lay there, inert, bewildered as in the grip of an unknown force, until presently she was aware of the beating of his heart, and a glimmering of what he felt came to her.  Nor was it an understandable thing, except to the woman who loved him.  And yet and yet she feared it even in that instant of glory.