t not fulfil it. She had come down from her room with the fixed
purpose, attained after nights of sleepless struggle, of telling him
what she had seen. She found herself alone again, the task unfulfilled.
And she knew that she could not face him again.

CHAPTER XXXIII

A GARDEN-PARTY

Waymark received with astonishment Maud's letter from Paris. He had
seen her only two days before, and their conversation had been of the
ordinary kind; Maud had given him no hint of her purpose, not even when
he spoke to her of the coming holiday season, and the necessity of her
having a change. She confessed she was not well. Sometimes, when they
had both sat for some minutes in silence, she would raise her eyes and
meet his gaze steadily, seeming to search for something. Waymark could
not face this look; it drove him to break the suspense by any kind of
remark on an indifferent subject. He remembered now that she had gazed
at him in that way persistently on the last evening that they were
together. When he was saying good-bye, and as he bent to kiss her, she
held him back for a moment, and seemed to wish to say something.
Doubtless she had been on the point of telling him that she was going
away; but she let him leave in silence.

It was not a long letter that she wrote; she merely said that change
had become indispensable to body and soul, and that it had seemed best
to make it suddenly.

"I hope," she wrote in conclusion, "that you will see my father as
often as you can; he is very much in need of friendly company, and I
should like you to be able to send me news of him. Do not fear for me;
I feel already better. I am always with you in spirit, and in the
spirit I love you; God help me to keep my love pure!"

Waymark put away the letter carelessly; the first sensation of surprise
over, he did not even care to speculate on the reasons which had led
Maud to leave home. It was but seldom now that his thoughts busied
themselves with Maud; the unreal importance which she had for a time
assumed in his life was only a recollection; her very face was
ghostlike in his mind's eye, dim, always vanishing. If the news of her
departure from England moved him at all, it was with a slight sense of
satisfaction; it would be so much easier to write letters to her than
to speak face to face. Yet, in the days that followed, the ghostlike
countenance hovered more persistently before him than was its wont;
there was a far-off pleading in its