ecked and
baffled her. There was something almost gentle in his smile as he said
good-bye, and she thought she detected warmth in the clasp of his hand.

Left alone, she sat in the silence, pondering as she had not pondered
in the past three years. These few days in town, out of the season,
were sandwiched between social functions from which their lives were
never free. They had ever passed from event to event like minor
royalties with endless little ceremonies and hospitalities; and there
had been so little time to meditate--had there even been the wish?

The house was very still, and the far-off, muffled rumble of omnibuses
and cabs gave a background of dignity to this interior peace and
luxurious quiet. For long she sat unmoving--nearly two hours--alone
with her inmost thoughts. Then she went to the little piano in the
corner where stood the statue of Andromeda, and began to play softly.
Her fingers crept over the keys, playing snatches of things she knew
years before, improvising soft, passionate little movements. She took
no note of time. At last the clock struck twelve, and still she sat
there playing. Then she began to sing a song which Alice Tynemouth had
written and set to music two years before. It was simply yet
passionately written, and the wail of anguished disappointment, of
wasted chances was in it--

"Once in the twilight of the Austrian hills,
A word came to me, beautiful and good;
If I had spoken it, that message of the stars,
Love would have filled thy blood:
Love would have sent thee pulsing to my arms,
Thy heart a nestling bird;
A moment fled--it passed:
I seek in vain
For that forgotten word."

In the last notes the voice rose in passionate pain, and died away into
an aching silence.

She leaned her arms on the piano in front of her and laid her forehead
on them.

"When will it all end--what will become of me!" she cried in pain that
strangled her heart. "I am so bad--so bad. I was doomed from the
beginning. I always felt it so--always, even when things were
brightest. I am the child of black Destiny. For me--there is nothing,
nothing, for me. The straight path was before me, and I would not walk
in it."

With a gesture of despair, and a sudden faintness, she got up and went
over to the tray of spirits and liqueurs which had been brought in with
the coffee. Pouring out a liqueur-glass of brandy, she was about to
drink it, when her ear became attracted by a noise wit