"My dear, try to calm yourself," said Polly. "There--sit down. You’re making yourself ill. Vincent hasn’t told any one. He never will, Angelica." "He said he would!" "He never will. He’s dead." Her voice broke in a faint sob. "_Dead?_" cried Angelica. "Vincent? In the war?" "The transport he was on, struck a mine." "Then he never got there? He never told Eddie?" "No." "Oh, Mrs. Geraldine!" she cried. "Then I’m _safe_!" Polly turned away. "Don’t you feel _sorry_?" she asked. "He was very young to die." Angelica shook her head. "No, I can’t," she said; "not just now. I can’t feel anything but glad." IV She stopped on her way home to tell Sillon and Devery that "it was all right." She let them know, modestly, that there was a certain person now in France in whom she was profoundly interested, and that she had feared some bad news in regard to him. Then she went to a quiet little restaurant and ate a delicious little dinner all alone, and in the chilly, cloudy evening walked home--a long walk. She was enjoying a feeling of exquisite and complete triumph. She had won! She was safe now, her troubles over. Certainly God had helped her. She was young, beautiful, beloved; she was about to be rich. She had made a gallant fight against great odds, and she had conquered. She greeted her mother with unusual affection and was willing to talk with her for quite a time, about her business, about the shortcomings of the tenants, about everything in the world except what had happened. That she didn’t mention. She began slowly to undress while her mother was still in the kitchen, ironing a collar for her to wear the next day. She looked at herself in the mirror, in her dainty camisole--a beautiful woman, with her delicate bare arms, her slender shoulders, her curious, glowing black eyes in her pale and lovely face---- And suddenly, almost as if she saw it in the glass beside her own, another face, fierce, hawk-like, rigid and white, with bright hair spread out and floating as if in the sea. Her dead lover! CHAPTER FOURTEEN I The parlour now rejoiced in a new and pretty little "set," put in there only the week before in order to receive the visits of Eddie. On one of the chairs sat Mrs. Kennedy, dressed in silk, her hair skilfully fluffed by her daughter, her hands manicured, her feet in soft new boots. She was well aware that she had never looked so common, so perfectly the janitress and scrubwoman. Her strained, haggard face, her faded eyes, her blunted and withered hands belied her fine attire. They could have belonged only to a woman who had worked brutally and hopelessly. She was years younger than Mrs. Russell, but she might have passed for her mother.