her without shrinking from them
as she sat in the same high-hung sitting-room in which, just a week
before, she and Franklin Ide had had their memorable talk.

She had promised her friend to let him hear from her, but she had not
kept her promise. She knew that he had probably come back from Chicago,
and that if he learned of her sudden decision to return to Italy it
would be impossible for her not to see him before sailing; and as she
wished above all things not to see him she had kept silent, intending to
send him a letter from the steamer.

There was no reason why she should wait till then to write it. The
actual moment was more favorable, and the task, though not agreeable,
would at least bridge over an hour of her lonely evening. She went up
to the writing-table, drew out a sheet of paper and began to write his
name. And as she did so, the door opened and he came in.

The words she met him with were the last she could have imagined herself
saying when they had parted. "How in the world did you know that I was
here?"

He caught her meaning in a flash. "You didn't want me to, then?" He
stood looking at her. "I suppose I ought to have taken your silence as
meaning that. But I happened to meet Mrs. Wynn, who is stopping here,
and she asked me to dine with her and Charlotte, and Charlotte's
young man. They told me they'd seen you arriving this afternoon, and I
couldn't help coming up."

There was a pause between them, which Mrs. Lidcote at last surprisingly
broke with the exclamation: "Ah, she _did_ recognize me, then!"

"Recognize you?" He stared. "Why--"

"Oh, I saw she did, though she never moved an eyelid. I saw it by
Charlotte's blush. The child has the prettiest blush. I saw that her
mother wouldn't let her speak to me."

Ide put down his hat with an impatient laugh. "Hasn't Leila cured you of
your delusions?"

She looked at him intently. "Then you don't think Margaret Wynn meant to
cut me?"

"I think your ideas are absurd."

She paused for a perceptible moment without taking this up; then she
said, at a tangent: "I'm sailing tomorrow early. I meant to write to
you--there's the letter I'd begun."

Ide followed her gesture, and then turned his eyes back to her face.
"You didn't mean to see me, then, or even to let me know that you were
going till you'd left?"

"I felt it would be easier to explain to you in a letter--"

"What in God's name is there to explain?" She made no reply, and he
pressed