"I’ve got to take Vincent to the Country Club," she said. "He’s going to sing ‘Sambre et Meuse’ at an entertainment there. My dear, you should hear him. Of course we’re all supposed to be strictly neutral, and all that, but up there, at the club, the pretense is frightfully thin. All really decent people, you know. We have a dear little wounded Belgian officer who’s going to speak; but I’ve heard him simply hundreds of times, so I won’t wait. I’ll be home in half an hour. Make yourself at home, won’t you?" Angelica reassured her light-hearted hostess that she would be altogether happy and comfortable until her return, and, after the motor-car had gone, wandered back into the library, looking for a book. But she couldn’t read. She began to contemplate her coming interview with Vincent. She could not trust him for an instant. She never knew when he would be moved to tell the entire story to Eddie, or to his mother, or to any one else. If he were attacked by one of his fits of remorse, he would be almost certain to do so. She held him only by a threat made in a mood of supreme passion, which she could never recapture. Despair crept over her. This step along her stony path seemed too difficult. She had no violent emotion to carry her forward now; no impetus remained from her former terrific onslaughts. She had simply to state a request--a request of the utmost importance to all her future life; and she felt quite sure it would be refused. Her very unpleasant reverie was broken into by the entrance of the doctor. He came, he said, to apologize on behalf of Mrs. Russell for her lateness. She wouldn’t be able, after all, to escape the entertainment. He had brought Angelica a large, marvelous box of sweets, which he offered with a sort of subdued gallantry. She accepted it carelessly, and for a while listened to his talk. He had quite changed his tune now. He couldn’t keep an irrepressible jauntiness, or a sort of airy flattery, from his conversation with so pretty a girl; but he was deferential and decorous. He and his wife were both entirely resigned to the idea of Angelica as Eddie’s wife. If Eddie had to be married, one woman was as good as another, and Angelica was perhaps a little better than a possible alternative. At least they knew her, and they had, in a way, a sort of advantage with her. "I guess I’ll go to bed," said Angelica, who had been politely waiting for a pause in the doctor’s war talk. "I’m tired!" She went up to the room she had occupied before, prepared to go to bed at once; but she found the room just as she had left it, all that long, long time ago--bare, dismal, the bed covered with a sheet, the rugs taken up, leaving the floor bare, the curtains gone, dark shades pulled down.