d gently
at the fierce woman's thanks and turned to another strap and another
bundle. Again I went dead inside, and I turned away and hid my tears in
the back of the neck of the tiny Belgian in my arms.

"Just about five minutes before we put you off, Miss Hayes," said the
Commissioner as he came bustling up to me, smiling with the same energy
he had used in swearing so short a time ago.

Surreptitiously wiping my eyes and swallowing the sobs in my throat, I
held out the baby to its mother and began to say a halting "adieu" to
all of them.

Then an uproar arose. They had thought I was going with them, and they
clung and wept and kissed my hand and begged in broken words for me not
to leave them, though in their conduct there was not a trace of a lack
of confidence in Sam. Of course, nobody that knew Samuel Foster
Crittenden a whole hour, even in his dress clothes in the daytime, could
fail to have confidence in him for life. But those women wanted me, too,
and they wanted me badly. I had to be torn from their arms and flung off
the train. Sam did the tearing and the flinging, and he did it tenderly.
Just before the final shove, as I clung to his arm and sobbed, the big
hand went to my hair, and he said under his breath against my ear:

"God bless and keep you, darling--and Pete!" Then he swung up on the
last step of the train and left me--shoved off into a hard, cold world
full of luncheons and sight-seeing and dinner-parties and plays and
dances and suppers and lights and music and flowers and like miseries.
At the agony of the thought I staggered into the huge waiting-room at
the station and sank on one of the benches and closed my eyes to keep
the tears from dripping.

At first I just sat dumb and suffering--reviewing all the wonderful and
exciting and magnificent things I had been planning to do for and with
Peter and all the rest of my dear friends who were then in New York
having the times of their aristocratically rustic lives. I reminded
myself of the shopping excursion Mabel and I were going to make with
Edith and Julia on that very day. The responsibility of Julia's hats was
certainly mine, for I had told her to wait to get them in New York, and
she would surely need them immediately in the round of gaieties that had
been planned for them all. Then, who could help being delighted at the
thought of seeing Miss Editha and the colonel introduced to one of the
follies at the Whiter Garden? I knew that I would