place--terrible, yet beautiful--unexplored, and
for that reason all the more inviting, a place of shadows.

Laura rose and paced the floor, her hands pressed together over her
heart. She was excited, her cheeks flushed, a certain breathless
exhilaration came and went within her breast, and in place of the
intolerable ennui of the last days, there came over her a sudden, an
almost wild animation, and from out her black eyes there shot a kind of
furious gaiety.

But she was aroused by a step at the door. The messenger stood there, a
figure ridiculously inadequate for the intensity of all that was
involved in the issue of the hour--a weazened, stunted boy, in a
uniform many sizes too large.

Laura, seated at her desk, held the note towards him resolutely. Now
was no time to hesitate, to temporise. If she did not hold to her
resolve now, what was there to look forward to? Could one's life be
emptier than hers--emptier, more intolerable, more humiliating?

"Take this note to that address," she said, putting the envelope and a
coin in the boy's hand. "Wait for an answer."

The boy shut the letter in his book, which he thrust into his breast
pocket, buttoning his coat over it. He nodded and turned away.

Still seated, Laura watched him moving towards the door. Well, it was
over now. She had chosen. She had taken the leap. What new life was to
begin for her to-morrow? What did it all mean? With an inconceivable
rapidity her thoughts began racing through, her brain.

She did not move. Her hands, gripped tight together, rested upon the
desk before her. Without turning her head, she watched the retreating
messenger, from under her lashes. He passed out of the door, the
curtain fell behind him.

And only then, when the irrevocableness of the step was all but an
accomplished fact, came the reaction.

"Stop!" she cried, springing up. "Stop! Come back here. Wait a moment."

What had happened? She could neither understand nor explain. Somehow an
instant of clear vision had come, and in that instant a power within
her that was herself and not herself, and laid hold upon her will. No,
no, she could not, she could not, after all. She took the note back.

"I have changed my mind," she said, abruptly. "You may keep the money.
There is no message to be sent."

As soon as the boy had gone she opened the envelope and read what she
had written. But now the words seemed the work of another mind than her
own. They were unfamiliar;