ck of all allusion to his own feelings,
spoke whole volumes to the woman who knew him and could interpret them.
The thought of him grieved her; it was getting to be now the only grief
she had. Her own letters to him were brief and rare. Diana had a
nervous fear of letting the Clifton postmark be seen on a letter of
hers at home, knowing what sort of play sometimes went on in the
Pleasant Valley post office; so she never sent a letter except when she
had a chance to despatch it from New York. These epistles were very
abstract; they spoke of the baby, told of Mrs. Sutphen, gave details of
things seen and experienced; but of Diana's inner life, the fight and
the victory, not a whit. She could not write about them to Basil; for,
glad as he would be of what she could tell him, she could not say
enough. In getting deliverance from a love it was wrong to indulge, in
becoming able to forget Evan, she had not thereby come nearer to her
husband, or in the least fonder of thinking of him; and so Diana shrank
from the whole subject when she found herself with pen in hand and
paper before her.

When September was gone and October had begun its course, a letter came
from Basil in which he desired to know about Diana's plans. There were
no hindrances any longer in the way of her coming home, he told her.
Diana had known that such a notification would come, must come, and yet
it gave her an unwelcome start. Mrs. Sutphen had handed it to her as
they came in from their morning dip in the salt water; the coachman had
brought it late last evening from the post office, she said. Diana had
dressed before reading it; and when she had read it, she sat down upon
the threshold of her glass door to think and examine herself.

It was October, yet still and mild as June. Haze lay lingering about
the horizon, softened the shore of Long Island, hid with a thick
curtain the place of the busy city, the roar of which Diana could
plainly enough hear in the stillness, a strange, indistinct,
mysterious, significant murmur of distant unrest. All before and around
her was rest; the flowing waters were too quiet to-day to suggest
anything disquieting; only life, without which rest is nought. The air
was inexpressibly sweet and fresh; the young light of the day dancing
as it were upon every cloud edge and sail edge, in jocund triumph
beginning the work which the day would see done. Diana sat down and
looked out into it all, and tried to hold communion with he