new session, and that I was coming back--presently.
I concealed the name of my boat from her, and made a calculated
prevarication when I announced my presence in London. I telephoned
before I went back for my rooms to be prepared. She was, I knew, with
the Bunting Harblows in Durham, and when she came back to Radnor Square
I had been at home a day.

I remember her return so well.

My going away and the vivid secret of the present had wiped out from my
mind much of our long estrangement. Something, too, had changed in her.
I had had some hint of it in her letters, but now I saw it plainly. I
came out of my study upon the landing when I heard the turmoil of her
arrival below, and she came upstairs with a quickened gladness. It was a
cold March, and she was dressed in unfamiliar dark furs that suited her
extremely and reinforced the delicate flush of her sweet face. She held
out both her hands to me, and drew me to her unhesitatingly and kissed
me.

"So glad you are back, dear," she said. "Oh! so very glad you are back."

I returned her kiss with a queer feeling at my heart, too
undifferentiated to be even a definite sense of guilt or meanness. I
think it was chiefly amazement--at the universe--at myself.

"I never knew what it was to be away from you," she said.

I perceived suddenly that she had resolved to end our estrangement. She
put herself so that my arm came caressingly about her.

"These are jolly furs," I said.

"I got them for you."

The parlourmaid appeared below dealing with the maid and the luggage
cab.

"Tell me all about America," said Margaret. "I feel as though you'd been
away six year's."

We went arm in arm into our little sitting-room, and I took off the
fur's for her and sat down upon the chintz-covered sofa by the fire.
She had ordered tea, and came and sat by me. I don't know what I had
expected, but of all things I had certainly not expected this sudden
abolition of our distances.

"I want to know all about America," she repeated, with her eyes
scrutinising me. "Why did you come back?"

I repeated the substance of my letters rather lamely, and she sat
listening.

"But why did you turn back--without going to Denver?"

"I wanted to come back. I was restless."

"Restlessness," she said, and thought. "You were restless in Venice. You
said it was restlessness took you to America."

Again she studied me. She turned a little awkwardly to her tea things,
and poured needless water fr