he put her hand again to her forehead, then presently withdrew it and
looked over her shoulder at the paper lying upon the floor beside the
table. By degrees the vagueness and the absence of sensation vanished.
She had had her moments of merciful deadening, of indifference to pain;
they were past, and torment now began.

Perhaps half an hour went by. She rose from the sofa upon which she had
thrown herself, face down, pressed her hands to her temples, then,
moving to the table, wrote there a word or two, folded and addressed the
paper, and rang the bell. Young Isham appeared and she gave him the
note, bidding him, in a voice that by an effort she made natural, to
hasten upon his errand. When he was gone, she stooped and gathered from
the floor the fallen letters--the President's and Lewis Rand's--and laid
them in a drawer. The touch seemed to burn her, for she moaned a little.
She wandered for a moment uncertainly, here and there in the room, then,
returning to the sofa, fell upon her knees beside it, stretched out her
arms along the silk, and laid her head upon them. "O God! O God!" she
said, but made no other prayer.

The minutes passed. There was a step, the sound of the gate-latch, and a
hand upon the knocker. She rose from her knees, and was standing by the
table when, in another moment, the drawing-room door opened to admit
Ludwell Cary. He came forward.

"You sent for me"--He paused, stepped back, and looked at her fully and
gravely. "Something has happened. Tell me what it is."

"You know. You have known all the time. You knew last summer in the
cedar wood!" Her voice broke; she raised her arms above her head, then
let them fall with a cry. "You knew--you knew!"

"How have you come to know? No, don't tell me!"

"I am mad, I think. A letter came that told me. I see now how the world
must look to madmen. It is a curious place where we are all
strangers--and yet we think it is our safe home."

As she turned from him, she reeled. There was a great chair near, beside
the window. Cary caught her by both hands, forced her to sit down, and
drew the curtains apart so that the air of night came fully in. The
quiet street was now deserted; the maple boughs, too, screened the
place. "Look!" he said. "Look how brightly Venus shines! All the immense
rack of clouds that we had at sunset has vanished. The box smells like
the garden at Fontenoy, where, I make no doubt, Deb and Major Edward are
walking up and down, countin