d on her hat she longed for a veil, such a heavily figured
veil as she had put on when setting out to the fortune teller's, who
had said, "A great love is in store for you." "How dreadfully I look!
This is the picture of me that he must take away with him." She
entered the living room as Parr and the taxi driver were carrying out
the valises. She took a flower from the gourd. A petal fell off; and
the taxi driver, brushing past her, ground it into the rug.

In the outer corridor, which she did not remember having passed through
last night, she held out her hand. Lawrence gave her the key; she
slipped it down the neck of her muslin frock, and it struck a chill
through her bosom.

When the ship had carried him away she returned uptown and took a train
for Long Island.

CHAPTER XII

Aunt Althea lay in a four-post bed near a window through which she
might see the sunshine resting on the small Italian garden. Her
colorless face was stamped with a look of almost infantile
acquiescence, though it was only three days since she had sat out there
in the garden, thinking:

"When Lilla comes back I'll ask her whether she wouldn't like a little
run over to Rome, before the season sets in."

The sick woman tell asleep. Her hair appeared grayer, her skin more
nearly transparent, than ordinarily. All her various ardors had not
slipped away from her without leaving on her countenance the marks of
their transmutation, a peculiar nobility that owed half its fineness to
unacknowledged suffering.

In the night the nurse decided to wake the physician, who was dozing in
one of the guest rooms. Aunt Althea had conquered time, had regained
her "beloved Europe." Somewhere in the New York house there was a
photograph of her, taken in her twenty-fifth year. She, too, it
seemed, had once been charming, full of young grace and eager
expectancy. And now she was in her twenty-fifth year again, and
driving through Rome to the English cemetery. She reached it. She met
some one there, to whom she spoke in Italian. It was a rendezvous of
lovers. And Lilla heard the sigh:

"Don't go. Don't smile at my intuition----"

Later, after seeming to listen intently, Aunt Althea cried:

"What are they calling? All massacred at Adowa!" She uttered a moan,
"I knew it!"

To the doctor's surprise she lived through the following day. By
evening everybody had become hopeful of her recovery. Aunt Althea,
turning her faded, aristocr