ess had been transmitted to some stranger whose thoughts and
gestures were indifferent to her...

Suddenly she heard a shrill tinkle, and with a beating heart she
stood still in the middle of the room. It was the telephone in her
dressing-room--a call, no doubt, from Adelaide Painter. Or could Owen
have learned she was in town? The thought alarmed her and she opened the
door and stumbled across the unlit room to the instrument. She held it
to her ear, and heard Darrow's voice pronounce her name.

"Will you let me see you? I've come back--I had to come. Miss Painter
told me you were here."

She began to tremble, and feared that he would guess it from her voice.
She did not know what she answered: she heard him say: "I can't
hear." She called "Yes!" and laid the telephone down, and caught it up
again--but he was gone. She wondered if her "Yes" had reached him.

She sat in her chair and listened. Why had she said that she would see
him? What did she mean to say to him when he came? Now and then, as she
sat there, the sense of his presence enveloped her as in her dream, and
she shut her eyes and felt his arms about her. Then she woke to reality
and shivered. A long time elapsed, and at length she said to herself:
"He isn't coming."

The door-bell rang as she said it, and she stood up, cold and trembling.
She thought: "Can he imagine there's any use in coming?" and moved
forward to bid the servant say she could not see him.

The door opened and she saw him standing in the drawing-room. The room
was cold and fireless, and a hard glare fell from the wall-lights on the
shrouded furniture and the white slips covering the curtains. He looked
pale and stern, with a frown of fatigue between his eyes; and she
remembered that in three days he had travelled from Givre to London and
back. It seemed incredible that all that had befallen her should have
been compressed within the space of three days!

"Thank you," he said as she came in.

She answered: "It's better, I suppose----"

He came toward her and took her in his arms. She struggled a little,
afraid of yielding, but he pressed her to him, not bending to her but
holding her fast, as though he had found her after a long search: she
heard his hurried breathing. It seemed to come from her own breast, so
close he held her; and it was she who, at last, lifted up her face and
drew down his.

She freed herself and went and sat on a sofa at the other end of the
room. A mirror b