e hunt that's going on doesn't find
him, how shall you do it? He's at the bottom of the sea, I hope."

They parted and the same night Estelle set out to satisfy her will. She
told nobody of her purpose, for she knew that her father would not have
allowed her to pursue it. Waldron was utterly crushed by the death of
his friend and could not as yet realise the loss.

Nor did Estelle realise it, save in fitful and fleeting agonies. As yet
the full significance of the event was by no means weighed by her. It
meant far more than she could measure and receive and accept in so
brief a space of time. Seen from the standpoint of this death, every
plan of her life, every undertaking for the future, was dislocated. She
left that complete ruin for the present. There was no hurry to restore,
or set about rebuilding the fabric of her future. She would have all her
life to do it in.

The thought of Abel came as a demand to her justice. Her knowledge,
amounting to a conviction, required action. The nature of the action she
did not know, but something urged her to reach him if she could. For she
believed him mad. Great torture of spirit had overtaken her under her
loss; but upon this extreme grief, ugly and incessant, obtruded the
thought of Abel, the secret of his present refuge and the impulse to
approach him. Her personal suffering established rather than shook her
own high standards. She had promised the boy never to tell anybody of
the haunt he had shown her under the roof in the old store at West
Haven; and if most women might now have forgotten such a promise,
Estelle did not. But she very strenuously argued against the spiritual
impulse to seek him, for every physical instinct rose against doing so.
To do this was surely not required of her, for whereunto would it lead?
What must be the result of any such meeting? It might be dreadful; it
could not fail to be futile. Yet all mental effort to escape the task
proved vain. Her very grief edged her old, austere, chivalrous
acceptance of duty. She felt that justice called her to this ordeal, and
she went--with no fixed purpose save to see him and urge him to
surrender himself for his own peace if he could understand. No personal
fear touched her reflections. She might have welcomed fear in these
unspeakable moments of her life, for she was little enamoured of living
after Raymond Ironsyde died. The thought of death for herself had not
been distasteful at that time.

She went fear