the forgotten word they looked at one another in stricken
silence.

"Y-yes; to _your_ home first, if you will let me drop you there--"

"Thank you; that might be imprudent."

"No, I think not. You say you are living at the Gerards?"

"Yes, temporarily. But I've already taken another place."

"Where?"

"Oh, it's only a bachelor's kennel--a couple of rooms--"

"Where, please?"

"Near Lexington and Sixty-sixth. I could go there; it's only partly
furnished yet--"

"Then tell Hudson to drive there."

"Thank you, but it is not necessary--"

"Please let me; tell Hudson, or I will."

"You are very kind," he said; and gave the order.

Silence grew between them like a wall. She lay back in her corner,
swathed to the eyes in her white furs; he in his corner sat upright,
arms loosely folded, staring ahead at nothing. After a while he rubbed
the moisture from the pane again.

"Still in the Park! He must have driven us nearly to Harlem Mere. It
_is_ the Mere! See the cafe lights yonder. It all looks rather gay
through the snow."

"Very gay," she said, without moving. And, a moment later: "Will you
tell me something? . . . You see"--with a forced laugh--"I can't keep my
mind--from it."

"From what?" he asked.

"The--tragedy; ours."

"It has ceased to be that; hasn't it?"

"Has it? You said--you said that w-what I did to you was n-not as
terrible as what I d-did to myself."

"That is true," he admitted grimly.

"Well, then, may I ask my question?"

"Ask it, child."

"Then--are you happy?"

He did not answer.

"--Because I desire it, Philip. I want you to be. You will be, won't
you? I did not dream that I was ruining your army career when I--went
mad--"

"How did it happen, Alixe?" he asked, with a cold curiosity that chilled
her. "How did it come about?--wretched as we seemed to be
together--unhappy, incapable of understanding each other--"

"Phil! There _were_ days--"

He raised his eyes.

"You speak only of the unhappy ones," she said; "but there were
moments--"

"Yes; I know it. And so I ask you, _why_?"

"Phil, I don't know. There was that last bitter quarrel--the night you
left for Leyte after the dance. . . . I--it all grew suddenly
intolerable. _You_ seemed so horribly unreal--everything seemed unreal
in that ghastly city--you, I, our marriage of crazy impulse--the people,
the sunlight, the deathly odours, the torturing, endless creak of the
punkha. . . . It was not a question of--of