s impossible to say the things she had come to say,
because even in the supreme crises of life she could not lay down the
manner of a lady, she smiled the grave smile with which her mother had
walked through a ruined country, and taking up her muff, which she had
laid on the table, passed out into the hall. She had let the chance go
by, she had failed in her errand, yet she knew that, even though it cost
her her life, even though it cost her a thing far dearer than life--her
happiness--she could not have done otherwise. In the crucial moment it
was principle and not passion which she obeyed; but this principle,
filtering down through generations, had become so inseparable from the
sources of character, that it had passed at last through the intellect
into the blood. She could no more have bared her soul to that other
woman than she could have stripped her body naked in the market-place.

At the door her cab was still waiting, and she gave the driver the name
of the toy shop at which she intended to buy presents for Lucy's
stepchildren. Though her heart was breaking within her, there was no
impatience in her manner when she was obliged to wait some time before
she could find the particular sort of doll for which Lucy had written;
and she smiled at the apologetic shopgirl with the forbearing
consideration for others which grief could not destroy. She put her own
anguish aside as utterly in the selection of the doll as she would have
done had it been the peace of nations and not a child's pleasure that
depended upon her effacement of self. Then, when the purchase was made,
she took out her shopping list from her bag and passed as
conscientiously to the choice of Jenny's clothes. Not until the morning
had gone, and she rolled again up Fifth Avenue towards the hotel, did
she permit her thoughts to return to the stifled agony within her heart.

To her surprise Oliver was awaiting her in their sitting-room, and with
her first look into his face, she understood that he had reached in her
absence a decision against which he had struggled for days. For an
instant her strength seemed fainting as before an impossible effort.
Then the shame in his eyes awoke in her the longing to protect him, to
spare him, to make even this terrible moment easier for him than he
could make it alone. With the feeling, a crowd of memories thronged
through her mind, as though called there by that impulse to shield which
was so deeply interwoven with th