She halted on the pavement and looked at the façade of her house. Her gaze lingered. “I shall go to Hollywood,” she bolstered her courage. PART FIVE [Illustration] I Several days ago, I was taken by surprise at receiving a visit from Nicholas Van Suydam. It has been almost a year since Eva Litchfield’s death; and during this time we had known scarcely more of his movements than that he was abroad. That he had recently come back I also knew, because by chance I had witnessed his return. I had gone down to the docks to meet a friend who was arriving from Europe. It was a dingy day, and the smell of the ocean suggested but too forcibly man’s enslavement to machinery; for on its breath which could not rise through the fog it bore the horrid taint of oil. There was tumultuous noise--of winches, of the heterogeneous bulky things that are dropped into the holds of ships, of cart horses stamping their large hoofs and trucks unnecessarily back-firing. But on the cobbled expanse whose sweep connects the piers with the asphalt of the streets the maroon brougham waited, and enthroned upon the box was one of the two composed persons in New York. The irreproachable Higginson flicked from the ear of the off bay one of the few remaining horse-flies in town, but this necessary flourish of his whip did not cause a ripple of the puce livery. The bays were older; it was with more difficulty that he got an occasional curvet from them; but the brougham had been repainted and on Higginson’s top hat was a new cockade. For the little house in West Eleventh Street was empty; a renting agent’s sign creaked dismally above its white stoop. I was early, and the waiting-room as disheartening a sight as ever, so that I hastened out on the stripped length of the pier. Walking slowly ahead of me was Mrs. Van Suydam. To all appearance, she wore the same garments which had decently restricted her form three years ago; the same bonnet-like hat protected the head it scorned to adorn, and drawn tightly across her nose was a wisp of veil which might have been cut from the same piece. But she, like her horses, was older; she went directly to the barrier and clutched it with trembling hands. There was no way of avoiding her eye, which finally rested upon me. She inclined her head slightly. The ship was not yet in sight; we would have some time together. I went up to her. After the most perfunctory hand shake, she said, her words dropping like plummets: “I am meeting my son.” I realized that she said this because, at sight of me, she had asked herself: “Why shouldn’t I feel free to mention my son?”