John haunted her steps, and left her only when the Baron came. Then he disappeared until his rival's departure. Sydney grew distant in manner to von Rittenheim, and often he did not see her at all when he went to Oakwood. Hilda's visit to Mrs. Carroll was prolonged on the ground that seemed to have place in every one's mind, though no one could trace its origin, that she would stay on near Friedrich until it was time to go home to Germany to begin her wedding preparations,--say, until after Christmas,--and that they would be married as soon as the year of mourning was over. "It would be disgracefully soon if her husband had been a good man, of course, but he was such a beast!" And a shrug made all the necessary condonement for the hastening of the marriage. By September the whole neighborhood was converted to this belief, all except John, who _would_ not believe, and Sydney, who had not trusted herself to think. The compulsion of thought seized her in her own room one night, after a day when it had been forced upon her that there could be but one truth, and that the conclusion to which her friends had come. From window to window she walked, dragging her trailing draperies, softly blue in the moonlight. She was fretted into constant motion by the impelling might of a desire to do something that would put off the moment when she must stop and think out the situation. She tried to divert her fancy to the channels of her daily life. She decided what colts should be broken next summer. She devised a new plan for keeping Bob employed and happy when the dull days of winter should come. She endeavored to be grateful that her grandmother was less harassed by pain than usual. Yet through all wreathed the insistent cry, "Face it. You must face it." That compelling threat she knows who recognizes that the one dearest to her on earth must die. It commands the scrutiny of facts, and an end to the glossing of truth. It rings the knell of hope. Later comes the sustaining reflection of the future life,--its opportunities for work and its attendant happiness for him who enters upon it. But now is self's confrontment with loneliness, with sorrow, with despair. The cry became insistent in Sydney's ears. Face it she must. She stepped through the long window upon the balcony which commanded west and south. The moon swam cold in the steel-blue sky. The ribbon of low-lying mist betrayed the devious winding of the creek. On the horizon swung the gray masses of the mountains, their hardness veiled in the tender light of distance. Sydney fell on her knees and twisted her hands one within the other. She spoke in a whisper. "I cannot bear it! I cannot bear it! Oh, I cannot bear it!" she repeated over and over. Then stung to openness by the lash of the constant inward cry-- "I love him! Oh, I love him! Oh, I cannot bear it!" she moaned yet again.