"... God himself only knows how I feel. I can scarce believe that it is I who write. And yet it must be I. There is no such thing as redemption-- no such thing as hope--no such thing as palliation, or excuse. It is simply an end of me that is not death. Would to God it were. Death would be welcome--even a death of torture refined. There is nothing that I could say that you would understand for nothing that I could say would I myself understand. It is simply the end.... I hope I am insane. Yet I fear that I am not.... I am a ship without a rudder. My will is gone from me; I have no volition of my own--no soul--nothing. All that is left of me is a body, and the power still to suffer, and for the rest, only a great emptiness, and a greater pain." Kathryn had fainted, when she received that letter. Then fever had come, and with it, delirium. Which was merciful. For weeks she lay closer to death than to life.... Now she was better; and yet far from well. Violet eyes were sad--dull. Brown-gold flesh was pallid. She moved with languor. For weeks no word of all that meant so much was spoken; it was a topic carefully avoided. One day Kathryn had said that she must go to see Schuyler. They had tried to dissuade her; without success. This was to have been the day. So Blake himself had gone, eager to bear for her the shock, should there be a shock to be borne; and if not, to render easy her going. Elinor met him as he entered the drawing room. He set the child down, bidding her go find her nurse; then he turned to Mrs. VanVorst. "I have seen him," he said, simply. She looked the query that there was no need for lips to speak. He shook his head. "It is impossible," he declared. "Quite impossible. She was there." "We must dissuade Kathryn from going, then," said Elinor. He smiled, grimly, sadly. "It will not be hard, I fear. Muriel was there, too." And that was why Kathryn Schuyler did not go, then, to John Schuyler. [Illustration] CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE. THAT WHICH MEN SAID. A winter had come, and gone. It had been a bitter winter, and a cold. For Kathryn Schuyler had it been a bitter winter, indeed. Sick of heart, sick of body, she had stayed in the city, going out not at all, seeing of all her friends only Blake, trying with all her pride, with all her strength, to adjust herself to the new order of things. It had been a weary winter--a winter that dragged along on laggard feet, loitering, waiting. The love of Muriel, the sympathy of Elinor, the devotion of Blake were in it the only bits of brightness. She felt strange--lost--astray. By day, she was dull, listless. At night sometimes, she slept a little; at others she would bury her face in her tumbled pillow, and her lithe body would heave with the wracking of her sobs; for the entire structure of her life had been ruthlessly torn down by the hand of one man. It seemed to her that from its ruin nothing might ever be erected.