, and making the excuse
of an errand on the next block, she parted from him at the gate, and
hurried like a shadow back along High Street.

Until October there was no word from Oliver, and then at last there came
a letter, which she threw, half read, into the fire. The impulsive act,
so unlike the normal Virginia, soothed her for an instant, and she said
over and over to herself, while she moved hurriedly about the room, as
though she were seeking an escape from the moment before her, "I'm glad
I didn't finish it. I'm glad I let it burn." Though she did not realize
it, this passionate refusal to look at or to touch the thing that she
hated was the last stand of the Pendleton idealism against the triumph
of the actuality. It is possible that until that moment she had felt far
down in her soul that by declining to acknowledge in words the fact of
Oliver's desertion, by hiding it from the children, by ignoring the
processes which would lead to his freedom, she had, in some obscure way,
deprived that fact of all power over her life. But now while his letter,
blaming himself and yet pleading with her for his liberty, lay there,
crumbling slowly to ashes, under her eyes, her whole life, with its
pathos, its subterfuge, its losing battle against the ruling spirit of
change, seemed crumbling there also, like those ashes, or like that
vanished past to which she belonged. "I'm glad I let it burn," she
repeated bitterly, and yet she knew that the words had never really
burned, that the flame which was consuming them would never die until
she lay in her coffin. Stopping in front of the fire, she stood looking
down on the last shred of the letter, as though it were in reality the
ruins of her life which she was watching. A dull wonder stirred in her
mind amid her suffering--a vague questioning as to why this thing, of
all things, should have happened? "If I could only know why it was--if I
could only understand, it might be easier," she thought. "But I tried so
hard to do what was right, and, whatever the fault was, at least I never
failed in love. I never failed in love," she repeated. Her gaze, leaving
the fire, rested for an instant on a little alabaster ash-tray which
stood on the end of the table, and a spasm crossed her face, which had
remained unmoved while she was reading his letter. Every object in the
room seemed suddenly alive with memories. That was his place on the
rug; the deep chintz-covered chair by the hearth was the