en
out before."

"My trunks can wait," chuckled the old lady. "They'll be sent for."

As Electra's carriage turned from the driveway into the road, Madam
Fulton laughed again.

Electra had five minutes at the station, and there appeared Peter,
wearing the air of haste. He had been painting in the garden, when the
carriage went by, and he had dropped brush and palette to run. Why,
Peter could not have said, only it seemed cold and miserable to have an
imperial lady taking the train alone and then setting sail with no one
by.

"You wouldn't let me go up to town with you?" he ventured, with his
eager stammer.

"No," returned Electra, "thank you."

"I'd like to awfully," said Peter. "Maybe I could be of use."

"Everything is done. My luggage is on board. We sail at three."

"It seems an infernally lonesome thing to do!"

Electra smiled. She had gained that smile of late. It was a subtle
indication of the secret knowledge she had of the resources of her own
future. With a perfect and simple conviction, she believed she should be
guided by Markham MacLeod or some unseen genius of his life. She should
follow his star. She should know where to go.

"Rose said you didn't take the letters she offered you. Is that wise,
Electra? If you want to know the Brotherhood--"

"I shall know it," said Electra, with entire simplicity. "The way will
open."

She did not say that she could not bear to blur her secret by sharing it
overmuch with any one. She was going on a mission for the chief. Other
voices would confuse the message. The medium must be kept clarified
between his soul and hers. Peter stood back, feeling, in another form,
Madam Fulton's hopeless admiration of this magnificent futility.

"Well," he said, "I shall be there in the late autumn, and I shall find
you."

"I may not," said Electra decisively, "want to be found."

But when he thought of the elements into which she meant to hurl
herself, he was of the opinion that she would as gladly long to be found
as the maiden in the arena before the beasts walked in. Then the train
came, and she bade him a civil and correct good-by and was taken away.

Peter went home wondering, his eyes on the ground. Life seemed to
resolve itself, not into the harmonious end of tragedy, but into more
tragedy. Human things, when a solution was reached, deliberately began a
new act. Peter had the childlike egoism of the very religious or the
devotee of art. He never could help fee