e that has poisoned you against the good, clean, healthy way of
life. I wish we'd had a kiddie. We'd have a fighting chance for
happiness now; something to keep us sane, something outside of our own
ego to influence us."

"Thank God there isn't one!" she muttered.

"Ah, well," Bill sighed, "I guess there is no use. I guess we can't
get together on anything. There doesn't seem to be any give-and-take
between us any longer."

He rose and walked to the door. With his hand on the knob, he turned.

"I have fixed things at the bank for you," he said abruptly.

Then he walked out, without waiting for an answer.

She heard the soft whir of the elevator. A minute later she saw him on
the sidewalk. He had an overcoat on his arm, a suit case in his hand.
She saw him lift a finger to halt a passing car.

It seemed incredible that he should go like that. Surely he would come
back at noon or at dinner time. She had always felt that under his
gentleness there was iron. But deep in her heart she had never
believed him so implacable of purpose where she was concerned.

She waited wearily, stirring with nervous restlessness from room to
room.

Luncheon passed. The afternoon dragged by to a close. Dusk fell. And
when the night wrapped Granville in its velvet mantle, and the street
lights blinked away in shining rows, she cowered, sobbing, in the big
chair by the window.

He was gone.

Gone, without even saying good-by!

CHAPTER XXXI

A LETTER FROM BILL

All through the long night she lay awake, struggling with the
incredible fact that Bill had left her; trying to absolve herself from
blame; flaring up in anger at his unyielding attitude, even while she
was sorely conscious that she herself had been stubbornly unyielding.
If he had truly loved her, she reiterated, he would never have made it
an issue between them. But that was like a man--to insist on his own
desires being made paramount; to blunder on headlong, no matter what
antagonisms he aroused. And he was completely in the wrong, she
reasserted.

She recapitulated it all. Through the winter he had consistently
withdrawn into his shell. For her friends and for most of her
pleasures he had at best exhibited only tolerance. And he had ended by
outraging both them and her, and on top of that demanded that she turn
her back at twenty-four hours' notice, on Granville and all its
associations and follow him into a wilderness that she dreaded. She