She saw her husband go forth into the heat again, and blamed herself, according to her wont of a morning after the night's mistakes, for robbing him of his rest and heaping her self-imposed burdens upon him. He laughed at the remorse tenderly, and brushed away the burdens, and faced the day's actualities with the not too fine remark, "I must go and see what's loose outside." Everything was "loose" apparently. Something about a "hoist" had broken in the night, and the men were still at work without breakfast, an eighteen-hour shift. The order came for Ito to send out coffee and bread and fruit to the famished gang. Ito was in the lowest of spirits; had just given his mistress warning that he could not stay. The affair of the letter had wounded his susceptibilities; he must go where he would be better understood. All this in a soft, respectful undertone, his mistress trying to comfort him, and incidentally hasten his response to the requisition from outside. At eleven o'clock Mr. Thorne sent in a pencil message on a card: "I shall not be home to lunch. Does she want to get the 12:30 train?" Mrs. Thorne replied in the same manner, by bearer: "She did, but she is asleep. I don't like to wake her." The darkened house preserved its silence, a restless endurance of the growing heat. Mrs. Thorne, in the thinnest of morning gowns, her damp hair brushed back from her powdered temples, sat alone at luncheon. Ito had put a melancholy perfection into his last salad. It was his valedictory. She was about to rise when Miss Benedet came silently into the room with her long, even step. Her dark eyes were full of sleep. Mrs. Thorne rang, and began to fuss a little over her guest to cover the shyness each felt at the beginning of a new day. They had parted at too high a pitch of expression to meet again in the same emotional key. Miss Benedet looked at the clock, lifting her eyebrows wearily. "I have lost my train," she remarked, but added no reproaches. "Is there an evening train to the city?" "Not from here," Mrs. Thorne replied; "but we could send you over to Colfax to catch the night train from there. I hoped we could have you another day." "That would be impossible," said Miss Benedet; "but I shall be giving you a great deal of trouble." "Oh, no; it is only ten miles. Mr. Thorne will take you; we will both take you. It is a beautiful drive by moonlight through the woods. Was I wrong not to call you?" "If you were, you will be punished by having me on your hands this long, hot afternoon. I ought to have gone last night. When one has parted with the very last bit of one's self, one should make haste to remove the shell." "Then you would have left me with something remaining on my mind, something I must get rid of at once. Come, let us go where we cannot see each other's faces. I am deeply in the wrong concerning you."