There was nothing to do but to go home. She remembered now how in her agitated watching for her son she had put her purse down on the corner of her bureau--and left it there. Yes; there was nothing to do but go back. "I can start to-morrow," she said to herself. But in the sick reaction of the moment she knew that she could never start again; her purpose had been shattered by the blow. She took her bundle--the bundle that meant flight and disguise and self-sacrifice, and that stood for the shrewdness which is so characteristic of the kind of stupidity which forgets the purse--and went stumbling down in the darkness to the river. She said to herself that she must get her muff; and she thought heavily that it would be pretty hard to carry so many things across the ice. She was numb with the shock of interrupted ecstasy. She could not feel even mortification--only fatigue. She was so tired that, seeing in the darkness a hurrying figure approaching her, she did not recognize her husband until he was almost upon her. "_Milly_? My God! Milly!" He had her muff in his hand, and as he reached her he caught at her shoulder and shook her roughly. "Milly--I thought--I thought--" He stammered with agitation. "I found this muff, and I thought it was yours; and Neddy's gone, too, and I thought--both of you--" "Neddy _gone_?" she repeated, dully. She stood still on the ice, trying to get her wits together. "He's disappeared. He isn't in town. He went out early this morning. To skate, I suppose. Nora saw him from her window; at about six, she says. And this open water"--she felt him quiver at her side--"and then this muff--" "No!" she said. "I--I made a mistake." She did not take in the words about Ned. "But where is he? Nobody's seen him. I suppose I'm a fool, but I'm uneasy. I came to meet you because I thought you might know. But when I saw this muff--it is yours, Milly, isn't it?--I got into a panic about you, too." "Why," she said--"it's mine; yes. I--I left it--I suppose. Neddy wasn't with me. Did you think he was with me? I don't understand," she ended, bewildered. "He hasn't been at home all day," her husband said, "nor in town, either." And then he repeated the story, while she looked at him, slow understanding dawning in her eyes. "Neddy--gone! Where?" "But that's what I don't know," the father said. And his wife, dazed still, but awake to the trouble in his voice, began to comfort him, alarm rising slowly in her own heart like an icy wave. "Maybe he went to see somebody in Upper Chester?"