The Sorghams' London house had opened its refuge wide for her, and she
had gone into it like a child, to sleep and rest, and there she had
grown up again, to begin to think and to plan, project and puzzle as
those who grow up must do. She had never thought to such practical
purpose as she did in these days, and never come so nearly reaching an
end.

Just before dressing for dinner on this night, at the sensation the
touch of her husband's telegram gave her, she realized how near to a
not unusual decision she was, and when she put the envelope by with the
rest of her mail, the part of her mind which she would not let herself
look into was in confusion and doubt.

More effectively than Falconer's coming could have done, his few
telegraphed words brought him to his wife's consideration. And the
fantastic story of The Dials helped her, ridiculous as it was,
burlesque as it was, to think; in the very humor of it, a shock, and
helped her more reasonably to consider what otherwise her feelings
would have turned to tragedy.

Jimmy's ecstasies about the place recurred to her with renewed
cordiality. He had spent an hour at least describing it, and when he
had finished with "A woman must be there, it is made for a woman," Mary
Falconer had only seen herself in the frame that the old place
presented. She exclaimed aloud: "Oh, no, no," and continued to affirm
to herself that it was too fantastically absurd--"Jimmy!"

"It's only some delightful bit of charity, and he's too afraid of my
wretched conservatism and my ironies to have told me frankly about it."

Having in a very unfeminine way opened a crack for reason, its honest
face peered through, and Mary Falconer glanced at it with a sigh and a
half-amused recognition, as if she had not been face to face with
anything so cool and eminent for a long time.

Jimmy had hinted to her of a secret, in London; there was something he
said he wished to tell her about, would tell her in full later,
something that involved much happiness to others, and could it have
been this? Could it have been that he was really secretly married?
That at last the step of which he had constantly spoken, for which
indeed there had been times when together they had half-heartedly
planned for it, could it be that the one safeguard for them both had
actually been formed by him, and alone? But only a second would she
permit this conception of The Dials to obtain hold. "Ridiculous!" she
repeated, "r