ng her, as he
had meant to. But he never had the opportunity to attack her. In some
way Adelle conveyed to him that all was at an end between them, and made
it so plain that even Archie was forced to accept it as a fact for the
time being. He never saw Adelle again after the brief service at the
hillside grave.

Such a conclusion was inevitable: it came to Adelle without debate or
struggle of any sort. A tragedy such as theirs, common to man and woman,
either knits the two indissolubly together as nothing else can, or marks
the complete cessation of all relationship. In their case they had
nothing now, absolutely, to cement together. And Adelle was dimly
conscious that she had before her pressing duties to perform in which
Archie would be a mere drag.

For the present Archie went to the club to live, crestfallen, but
unbelieving that his little gilded world had come to an end for good in
this summary fashion. After a few attempts to get an interview with his
wife, and learning finally that she had left the neighborhood, he
drifted up to the city, for he found Bellevue less congenial than it had
been, with all the talk about the Davises' affairs that was rife. His
true performances the night of the fire had leaked out in a somewhat
exaggerated form and even his pleasure-loving associates found him "too
yellow." Oddly enough, Adelle, who had been thought generally "cold" and
"stupid," "no addition to the colony," came in for a good deal of
belated praise for her "strong character," and there was much sympathy
expressed for her tragedy. Thus the world revises its hasty judgments
with other equally hasty ones, remaining always helplessly in error
whether it thinks well or ill of its neighbors!

* * * * *

For a number of days after the burial of her child, Adelle remained at
the manager's cottage in a state of complete passivity, scarcely making
even a physical exertion. She did not cry. She did not talk. She neither
writhed nor moaned in her pain. She was making no effort to control her
feelings: she did not play the stoic or the Christian. Actually she did
not feel: she was numb in body and soul. This hebetude of all faculty
was the merciful, protecting method that Nature took with her, dimming
the lamp of consciousness until the wounded creature could gain
sufficient resiliency to bear a full realization of life. The pain would
come, months and years hence, bitter, aching pain; but then