“If Moira should learn about this, much, much later--years later when it could do no harm--about how I have given her up, she would love me all the more!” But the stray gleam crept out at once, leaving her mind darker than before. Moira would never know, never understand anything of all she had gone through. She buried her face in the pillow. In the middle of the night she suddenly started up, feeling frantically about the room for she knew not what. Was it affection, love, just the touch of something familiar? For Moira, of course ... but what a fool! Moira was gone, even the crib was gone. She was alone, absolutely alone, for the rest of her life. As she stumbled back to her bed, her hand encountered the big volume of “Les Misérables.” She caught it up and held it to her breast. The book had grown to be a symbol for her of their life together in fabulous years to come. Now those years were dead. The book was no longer necessary, no longer had any meaning.... Ellen put it away in one of the drawers of her bureau. She would never have to read in its pages again. It would be better if she did not, better that the gulf between them should widen rather than diminish. IX It is four o’clock of a September afternoon and brightly still. Over on the clean rolling golf course tiny figures in all combinations of white and grey and brown move like insects soundlessly from one point to another making odd motions. Even the jays which have been haggling and shrieking all day are quiet. An occasional tree-toad or katydid creaks from the false dusk of the Eastern woods. Locusts drone, and from a long way off comes the faint click of a reaping machine at intervals, but all these sounds only accentuate the silence. An eternal, slow-breathing calm rests upon the treetops waiting patiently for the cold of autumn. With a murmur that grows into a rumble the stillness is broken by a monstrous motor truck which swerves into the driveway from the road a quarter of a mile away and comes tumbling down the white track, its racket increasing with its nearness. The driver noisily shunts his gears at the kitchen door, and Ellen Sydney comes out to superintend the unloading and disposition of supplies. This done and the truckman sent away with a laugh, she strolls into the garden on that side of the house and is presently at work with a pair of shears snipping asters and marigolds for the table. There are many of them, so many they must be gathered in profusion. She has the air of one who is at home among the beds, who has worked on them and cherished them with her own hands.