n, went on, holding intact the thread
of her reflections. "If the break with Boone had been remediable it
would never have widened till so many months ran between them. No, she
has given each his _conge_, and she hasn't a penny of her own in the
world and--" She paused dramatically, and the man finished the sentiment
for her in a less alarmed tone.

"It would seem to leave her flat; still she has a good mind and
wonderful charm."

"Yes,"--the retort was dry. "The mind is untrained, and the charm is a
menace."

Mrs. Masters died early that summer, though the physicians assured her
self-accusing daughter that no possible connection of cause and effect
could be traced between her death and the heart attack provoked by the
doldrums of disappointment. But the girl's eyes were haunted when she
came back from the funeral to the empty house, which was not her own
house, and sat down, ghost-pale, against the black of her mourning. The
world which she must now face was an absolutely changed world from
which, as from dismantled furniture, all the easy cushioning and
draperies had been ripped away, leaving sharp and uncovered angles of
contact.

In it there was no place for her, save such a place as she could gain by
invoking some miracle, for which she had no formula, to exchange
butterfly beauty for the provident effectiveness of the ant hill.

Morgan, whose frequent letters had gone unanswered, became obsessed with
an anxiety which drove him homeward by a fast steamer that had seemed to
him intolerably slow.

When its voyage had ended, a fog had held it in the harbour for half a
day, and during that half day Morgan paced the decks, fuming over a
dozen apprehensions.

It was to a Morgan Wallifarro unaccustomedly pale and agitated that the
same lady, who had pessimistically forecast Anne's future, gave him, on
his arrival at home, what information she could.

"No one seems to have her address, Morgan," she said. "I suppose she
wanted, for a while, to be in new surroundings. As for myself, I had a
brief note sent back with a book I'd lent her. She said that she was
going to New York--but that was all, and when I telephoned she had
gone."

"But her affairs must be arranged for her. She has nothing," protested
the man desperately. "In God's name what is she going to do? How did she
suppose I was going to find her?"

The lady laid a hand on the young man's elbow, and tears came into her
own eyes,

"She didn't confide i