esentiment about it. Then, thinking I might
still dissuade her, I went slowly up the padded stairway--to find her
door locked; and a sense of the finality of her decision came over me. I
knew then that I could not alter it even were I to go all the lengths of
abjectness. Nor could I, I knew, have brought myself to have feigned a
love I did not feel.

What was it I felt? I could not define it. Amazement, for one thing, that
Maude with her traditional, Christian view of marriage should have come
to such a decision. I went to my room, undressed mechanically and got
into bed....

She gave no sign at the breakfast table of having made the decision of
the greatest moment in our lives; she conversed as usual, asked about the
news, reproved the children for being noisy; and when the children had
left the table there were no tears, reminiscences, recriminations. In
spite of the slight antagonism and envy of which I was conscious,--that
she was thus superbly in command of the situation, that she had developed
her pinions and was thus splendidly able to use them,--my admiration for
her had never been greater. I made an effort to achieve the frame of mind
she suggested: since she took it so calmly, why should I be tortured by
the tragedy of it? Perhaps she had ceased to love me, after all! Perhaps
she felt nothing but relief. At any rate, I was grateful to her, and I
found a certain consolation, a sop to my pride in the reflection that the
initiative must have been hers to take. I could not have deserted her.

"When do you think of leaving?" I asked.

"Two weeks from Saturday on the Olympic, if that is convenient for you."
Her manner seemed one of friendly solicitude. "You will remain in the
house this summer, as usual, I suppose?"

"Yes," I said.

It was a sunny, warm morning, and I went downtown in the motor almost
blithely. It was the best solution after all, and I had been a fool to
oppose it.... At the office, there was much business awaiting me; yet
once in a while, during the day, when the tension relaxed, the
recollection of what had happened flowed back into my consciousness.
Maude was going!

I had telephoned Nancy, making an appointment for the afternoon.
Sometimes--not too frequently--we were in the habit of going out into the
country in one of her motors, a sort of landaulet, I believe, in which we
were separated from the chauffeur by a glass screen. She was waiting for
me when I arrived, at four; and as soon a