a of
shadow that hung always over that place wrapped her in its suffocating
miasma, became part of the very air she breathed.

She had taken rooms in an old hostelry near the railroad station,
wishing to avoid the curious recognition that would have been inevitable
in the town's one good hotel. She was occupying what had been known in
days of former prosperity as the bridal suite. This consisted of a dingy
parlor, in which on the morrow Philip was to perform the ceremony that
made her his father's wife, and of the room in which she lay, its walls
dimly visible in the light of an arc-lamp just outside the window, gay
with saffron cupids who disported themselves among roses of the same
complexion. Over the mantel-piece of black iron hung an improbably
colored lithograph of lovers embracing.

Kate found the effect of these decorations ironic, curiously depressing.
She was not usually so responsive to environment.

Very near her now Jacques must be lying sleepless, too; watching for the
dawn as she was watching--but with what eagerness, what trembling hope!
Her depression shamed her. She tried in vain to conjure up a consoling
vision of the man she had loved so long. The figure that came to her
mind was more Philip than his father. She put it from her impatiently,
angrily.

"I believe I'm developing nerves," she thought.

Her eyes, weary of the meaningless, leering antics of the cupids,
presently came to rest on the ceiling above her bed, which appeared to
be a-flutter with small pieces of pasteboard. She made them out to be
business cards, evidently momentoes of passing knights of the road who
had amused themselves by sailing their credentials heavenward, each with
a transfixing pin. Kate smiled a little, oddly cheered by these
reminders of carefree, commonplace humanity which had lain sleepless
also in that dreary bridal chamber. The knights of the road were better
company for her thoughts than brides who might have dreamed there dreams
to which she had forfeited her right; young, innocent brides who were
not fighting their way to happiness over the happiness of their
children.

Now and again a train came thundering past her window, till the old
house shook to its foundation. For these she listened, tense and
quivering. One of them would be bearing away from her forever the
first-born of her children....

While she made ready for her journey, Jemima had also made ready for a
journey, grimly; Jacqueline wandering