al. And
the ever-recurring question presented itself--was he prepared to go that
length? He didn't know. She was beyond him, he had no clew to her, she
was to him as mysterious as a symphony. Certain strains of her moved him
intensely--the rest was beyond his grasp.... At supper, while his
children talked and laughed boisterously, he sat silent, restless, and in
spite of their presence the house seemed appallingly empty.

When Janet returned home she ran to her bedroom, and taking from the
wardrobe the tissue paper that had come with her new dress, and which she
had carefully folded, she wrapped the rose in it, and put it away in the
back of a drawer. Thus smothered, its fragrance stifled, it seemed
emblematic, somehow, of the clandestine nature of her love....

The weeks that immediately followed were strange ones. All the elements
of life that previously had been realities, trivial yet fundamental, her
work, her home, her intercourse with the family, became fantastic. There
was the mill to which she went every day: she recognized it, yet it was
not the same mill, nor was Fillmore Street the Fillmore Street of old.
Nor did the new and feverish existence over whose borderland she had been
transported seem real, save in certain hours she spent in Ditmar's
company, when he made her forget--hers being a temperament to feel the
weight of an unnatural secrecy. She was aware, for instance, that her
mother and even her father thought her conduct odd, were anxious as to
her absences on certain nights and on Sundays. She offered no
explanation. It was impossible. She understood that the reason why they
refrained from questioning her was due to a faith in her integrity as
well as to a respect for her as a breadwinner who lead earned a right to
independence. And while her suspicion of Hannah's anxiety troubled her,
on the occasions when she thought of it, Lise's attitude disturbed her
even more. From Lise she had been prepared for suspicion, arraignment,
ridicule. What a vindication if it were disclosed that she, Janet, had a
lover--and that lover Ditmar! But Lise said nothing. She was remote,
self-absorbed. Hannah spoke about it on the evenings Janet stayed at
home.

She would not consent to meet Ditmar every evening. Yet, as the days
succeeded one another, Janet was often astonished by the fact that their
love remained apparently unsuspected by Mr. Price and Caldwell and others
in the office. They must have noticed, on some oc