at her desire, had with unwilling
but obedient frostiness sent about his business. She had known that
Jack had taken up with M. Dubois at the time the artist was doing
her portrait; but she had not known that Jack was so intimate as the
artist's being admitted to Jack's secret seemed to indicate.

Within herself, some formless, incomprehensible thing seemed about
to happen. During these days of solitude--and this, too, even before
Matilda had gone--a queer new something had begun to stir within
her, almost as though threatening an eruption. It seemed a force, or
spirit, rising darkly from hitherto unknown spaces of her being. It
frightened her, with its amorphous, menacing strangeness. She tried to
keep it down. She tried to keep her mental eyes away from it. And so,
during all these days, she had no idea what the fearsome thing might
be....

And then something did happen. On the fifth day after Matilda's
departure, and the eighteenth after the sailing of the Plutonia, Mrs.
De Peyster observed a sudden change in the atmosphere of the house.
Within an hour, from being filled with honeymoon hilarity, the house
became filled with gloom. There was no more laughter--no more running
up and down the stairs and through the hallways--the piano's song was
silent. Mrs. De Peyster sought to gain some clue to this mysterious
change by listening for the talk of Mary and Jack and Mr. Pyecroft
as they passed her door. But whereas the trio had heretofore spoken
freely and often in liveliest tones, they now were either wordless or
their voices were solemnly hushed.

What did it mean? Days passed--the solemn gloom continued
unabated--and this question grew an ever more puzzling mystery to Mrs.
De Peyster. What could it possibly, _possibly_, mean?

But there was no way in which she could find out. Her only source of
information was Matilda, and Matilda was gone for a month; and even if
Matilda, by any chance, should know what was the matter, she would not
dare write; and even if she wrote, the letter, of course, would never
be delivered, but would doubtless be forwarded to the pretended Mrs.
De Peyster in Europe. Mrs. De Peyster could only wonder--and read--and
gaze furtively out of the little peep-holes of her prison--and
eat--and stack the empty cans yet higher in her bathroom--and
wait, impatiently wait, while the mystery grew daily and hourly in
magnitude.

Among the details that added to the mystery's bulk was the sound
of anot