hem both
that the enforced impotence was a new element in her pain. To walk the
town in search of work to which she was little suited, when that which
no one but herself could accomplish had to remain undone, became, during
the next few weeks, the most intolerable part of the irony of
circumstance. The wifely, the maternal qualities of her being, of which
she had never been strongly conscious till of late, awoke in response to
the need that drew them forth, only to be blighted by denial.

The inactivity was the harder to endure because of the fact that, as
autumn passed into early winter, there came a period when all her little
world seemed to have dropped her out of sight. There were no more
"off-days" at Waterwild, and Miss Lucilla's occasional letters from
Newport ceased. Between her mother-in-law and herself, after a few painful
attempts at intercourse, there had fallen an equally painful silence.
Even her two or three pupils fell away.

From the papers she learned that one or another of those for whom she
cared was back in town again. She walked in the chief thoroughfares in
the hope of meeting some of them, but chance refused to favor her. In
the dusk of the early descending November and December twilights she
passed their houses, watching the warm glow of the lights within,
against which, now and then, a shadow that she could almost recognize
would pass by. She could have entered at Miss Lucilla's door, or Mrs.
Wappinger's; but a strange shyness, the shyness of the unfortunate, had
taken hold of her, and she held back. In the mean time she was free to
watch, with sad eyes and sadder spirit, the great city, reversing the
processes of nature, awaken from the torpor of the genial months into
its winter life.

No one knew better than herself that thrill of excited energy with which
those born with the city instinct return from the acquired taste for
mountain, seaside, and farm, to enter once more the maze of purely human
relationships. It was a moment with which her own active nature was in
sympathy. She liked to see the blinds being raised in the houses and the
barricading doors taken down. She liked to see the vehicles begin to
crowd one another in the streets and the pedestrians on the pavement
wear a brisker air. She liked to see the shop-windows brighten with
color and the great public gathering-spots let in and let out their
throngs. She responded to the quickened animation with the spontaneity
of one all re