reast.

Then her eyes wandered from her child to a letter lying on the table.
The circumstance roused no interest in her mind. She knew from its
general appearance that it had been put there by Roland, and it was by
no means the first time he had left the child with a letter containing
some excuse which he thought valid enough to satisfy Denasia. She
looked at it with a little contempt. She expected to find it assert
that some one had called for him or had sent him a message involving a
possible engagement, and she knew the whole affair would resolve
itself into some plausible story, which she would either have to
accept or else deny, with the certain addition of a coolness or a
quarrel.

So the letter lay until she had put off and away her street costume.
Then she took it in her hand and sat down by the open window to read
the contents. They were short and very much to the point:

"DENASIA, MY DEAR:--You have ceased to love me and I have ceased
to love you. You are miserable and I am miserable. We have made a
great mistake, and we must do all we can to correct it. When you
read this I shall be on my way to England. I advise you to go back
to your parents for a year. You may in that time recover your
beauty and your voice. It may be well then to go to Italy and give
yourself an opportunity to obtain the education I see now you
ought to have had at the first. But until that is practicable we
are better apart. You will find fifty dollars in the white gloves
lying on the dressing-case. I advise you to take a sailing-vessel;
a long voyage will do you good and will be much cheaper. It is
what I have done. Farewell.

"ROLAND."

She read every word and then glanced at the cradle. The child moved.
With the letter in her hand she soothed it and then sat down again.
She was overwhelmed with the shameful wrong. But to cry out and wring
her hands and call in the neighbours to see and hear what things she
suffered was not her way. Often she had seen her mother sitting
speechless and motionless for hours while her father hung between life
and death; it was natural for Denasia to take unavoidable sorrow with
the same dumb patience.

Then she began to analyse the specious sentences and to deny the
things asserted. "I have not ceased to love. Every hour of the day my
life has been a witness to my love. I never said I was miserable.
Nothing had power to make me quite miserable if Roland was kind to me.