going to the opera in the evening. At the dressmaker's, while she
waited for a fitter to return from the workroom, she glanced at a
newspaper spread upon the table so that its entire front page was in
view. It was filled with an account of how the Woolens Monopoly had,
in that bitter winter, advanced prices twenty to thirty-five per cent.
all along the line. From the center of the page stared a picture of
John Dumont--its expression peculiarly arrogant and sinister.

She read the head-lines only, then turned from the table. But on the
drive up-town she stopped the carriage at the Savoy and sent the
footman to the news-stand to get the paper. She read the article
through--parts of it several times.

She had Langdon and Honoria Longview at dinner that night; by indirect
questioning she drew him on to confirm the article, to describe how the
Woolens Monopoly was "giving the country an old-fashioned winter." On
the way to the opera she was ashamed of her ermine wrap enfolding her
from the slightest sense of the icy air. She did not hear the singers,
was hardly conscious of her surroundings. As they left the
Metropolitan she threw back her wrap and sat with her neck bared to the
intense cold.

"I say, don't do that!" protested Langdon.

She reluctantly drew the fur about her. But when she had dropped him
and then Honoria and was driving on up the avenue alone, she bared her
shoulders and arms again--"like a silly child," she said. But it gave
her a certain satisfaction, for she felt like one who has a secret
store of food in time of famine and feasts upon it. And she sat
unprotected.

"Is Mr. Dumont in?" she asked the butler as he closed the door of their
palace behind her.

"I think he is, ma'am."

"Please tell him I'd like to see him--in the library."

She had to wait only three or four minutes before he came--in smoking
jacket and slippers. It was long since she had looked at him so
carefully as she did then; and she noted how much grosser he was, the
puffs under his eyes, the lines of cruelty that were coming out
strongly with autocratic power and the custom of receiving meek
obedience. And her heart sank. "Useless," she said to herself.
"Utterly useless!" And the incident of the necklace and its reminders
of all she had suffered from him and through him came trooping into her
mind; and it seemed to her that she could not speak, could not even
remain in the room with him.

He dropped into a cha