k
while the wave of sickness swept over her. Little by little it subsided,
and after a few minutes she stood up, shaken and terrified, groped for
her hat, and stumbled out into the air. But the whole sunlit autumn
whirled, reeled and roared around her as she dragged herself along the
interminable length of the road home.

As she approached the red house she saw a buggy standing at the door,
and her heart gave a leap. But it was only Mr. Royall who got out, his
travelling-bag in hand. He saw her coming, and waited in the porch.
She was conscious that he was looking at her intently, as if there was
something strange in her appearance, and she threw back her head with a
desperate effort at ease. Their eyes met, and she said: "You back?" as
if nothing had happened, and he answered: "Yes, I'm back," and walked
in ahead of her, pushing open the door of his office. She climbed to
her room, every step of the stairs holding her fast as if her feet were
lined with glue.

Two days later, she descended from the train at Nettleton, and walked
out of the station into the dusty square. The brief interval of cold
weather was over, and the day was as soft, and almost as hot, as when
she and Harney had emerged on the same scene on the Fourth of July. In
the square the same broken-down hacks and carry-alls stood drawn up in
a despondent line, and the lank horses with fly-nets over their withers
swayed their heads drearily to and fro. She recognized the staring signs
over the eating-houses and billiard saloons, and the long lines of wires
on lofty poles tapering down the main street to the park at its other
end. Taking the way the wires pointed, she went on hastily, with bent
head, till she reached a wide transverse street with a brick building
at the corner. She crossed this street and glanced furtively up at
the front of the brick building; then she returned, and entered a door
opening on a flight of steep brass-rimmed stairs. On the second landing
she rang a bell, and a mulatto girl with a bushy head and a frilled
apron let her into a hall where a stuffed fox on his hind legs proffered
a brass card-tray to visitors. At the back of the hall was a glazed door
marked: "Office." After waiting a few minutes in a handsomely furnished
room, with plush sofas surmounted by large gold-framed photographs of
showy young women, Charity was shown into the office....

When she came out of the glazed door Dr. Merkle followed, and led her
into anothe