grown to be the woman he thought her, and she railed bitterly at Fate.
For her there only remained the old path, and the knowledge filled her
with a leaden weariness. But for Ishmael--what remained for him? Never
again would he be able to delight in the world of hopes he had set up
with such care. What could she give him to help him face reality? The
plighted word, steadfastness, friendship, none of these gifts were
Blanche's to bestow, but she could at least send him away his own man
again--at the sacrifice of her vanity. A struggle shook her mind, all
the well-trained sophistries warring against a new clarity of vision.
There were two courses open to her--she might hoodwink Ishmael, bewilder
him with words, show herself as grieving, exquisite, far above him, yet
in spirit unchangeably his; or she might show him the truth, let him see
her as the world-ridden, egotistical creature of flimsy emotions and
tangible ambitions that she was. If she chose the first way, Ishmael
would have an unshattered ideal to take away and set up in his lonely
heart; but it placed forgetfulness out of the question for a man of his
temperament. If she decided on the second course, he would have a time
of bitter disillusionment, but could some day love again, perhaps all
the sooner for the shock; Blanche knew that nothing sends a man so
surely into a woman's arms as a rebuff from another woman. In her heart
she saw the finer course, yet the little voices clamoured, told her she
would be destroying the ideality of a delicate nature, spoiling
something that could never be the same again: on the one side whatever
there was of self-abnegation in her love, on the other the habit of a
lifetime.

She raised her head, and her glance was arrested idly by a deserted
spider's web woven from branch to branch of the elder hedge and wavering
gently in the breeze. Some seed husks had been blown into the meshes and
clung there lightly, cream-hued against the pearly threads. Blanche