ressed her handkerchief to her
eyes.

"Good-by, Howard," she said. "I--I did not expect you to understand. If I
had stayed, I should have made you miserably unhappy."

He took her hand in a dazed manner, as though he knew not in the least
what he was doing. He muttered something and found speech impossible. He
gulped once, uncomfortably. The English language had ceased to be a
medium. Great is the force of habit! In the emergency he reached for his
cigarette case.

Honora had given orders that the carriage was to wait at the door. The
servants might suspect, but that was all. Her maid had been discreet. She
drew down her veil as she descended the steps, and told the coachman to
drive to the station.

It was raining. Leaning forward from under the hood as the horses
started, she took her last look at the lilacs.

CHAPTER VIII

IN WHICH THE LAW BETRAYS A HEART

It was still raining when she got into a carriage at Boston and drove
under the elevated tracks, through the narrow, slippery business streets,
to the hotel. From the windows of her room, as the night fell, she looked
out across the dripping foliage of the Common. Below her, and robbed from
that sacred ground, were the little granite buildings that housed the
entrances to the subway, and for a long time she stood watching the
people crowding into these. Most of them had homes to go to! In the
gathering gloom the arc-lights shone, casting yellow streaks on the
glistening pavement; wagons and carriages plunged into the maelstrom at
the corner; pedestrians dodged and slipped; lightnings flashed from
overhead wires, and clanging trolley cars pushed their greater bulk
through the mass. And presently the higher toned and more ominous bell of
an ambulance sounded on its way to the scene of an accident.

It was Mathilde who ordered her dinner and pressed her to eat. But she
had no heart for food. In her bright sitting-room, with the shades
tightly drawn, an inexpressible loneliness assailed her. A large
engraving of a picture of a sentimental school hung on the wall: she
could not bear to look at it, and yet her eyes, from time to time, were
fatally drawn thither. It was of a young girl taking leave of her lover,
in early Christian times, before entering the arena. It haunted Honora,
and wrought upon her imagination to such a pitch that she went into her
bedroom to write.

For a long time nothing more was written of the letter than "Dear Uncle
Tom and Aun