drawing room to allow
more freedom to her maid, who was packing a dressing-case and rolling up
steamer rugs. Her fellow travelers eyed her with curiosity. She was
doubtless some great and exclusive personage, for she had not appeared
in public, not even in the diner. She sank into the vacant seat with an
air of hopeless weariness, yet her restless hands never ceased their
groping, her slim fingers slipped in and out, in and out of the loop of
her long neck chain, or nervously twined one with another in endless
intertouch.

The long journey north was over at last. The weary days and nights of
hurried travel. Only a moment more and the familiar sights and sounds of
the great city would greet her once again. She was going home--to what?
Mrs. Marteen did not dare to picture the future. Pursued, as if by the
Furies themselves, she had been driven, madly, blind with suffering,
back to the scene of disaster--to know--to know--the worst, perhaps--but
to know!

Day and night, night and day, her iron will had fought the fever that
burned in her veins. Silent, self-controlled, she had given no sign of
her suffering and her terror, though her eyes were ringed with
sleeplessness and her mouth had grown stiff with its effort to command.
The tension was torture. Her heart strings were drawn to the snapping
point; her mind was a bowstring never relaxed, till every fiber of her
resistant body ached for relief.

At last they had arrived. At last the hollow rumble of the train in the
vast echoing station warned her of her journey's end. Instinctively she
gave her orders, thrusting her baggage checks into the hands of her
maid.

"I'm going on at once," she said. "Attend to everything. Give me my
little necessaire. I don't feel quite well, and I want to get home as
quickly as possible."

She hurried away before the servant could ask a question, and was
directed to the open cab stand. As she stepped in, she reeled.
Trepidation took hold upon her, but with enforced calm, she seated
herself, and gave the address to the starter. As the motor drew away
from the great buildings, she threw back her veil for the first time,
and opened a window. The rush of cool air revived her somewhat, but her
heart beat spasmodically, her blood seemed a thin, unliving stream.
Street after street slipped by like a panorama on a screen, familiar,
yet unreal. The world, her world, had changed in its essence, in its
every manifestation.

At last the taxi dre