For a week after her return from Jersey she felt as if she were going mad. Life seemed to have stopped; the future was a blank sheet. Try to write on it as she would, the characters took neither form nor color. To go and live alone would mean no more than the change from her sister’s flat to a bare-walled room; to remain in her present conditions was unthinkable. She had neither the money nor the beauty to accumulate interests in life. Books ceased to interest her, imagination failed her. She tried to write, but passion was dead, and the blood throbbed in her head and drowned words and ideas. She had come to the edge of life, and at her feet swept the river—in its depths were peace and oblivion—eternal rest—a long, cool night—the things which crawl in the deep would suck the blood from her head—a claw with muscles of steel would wrench the brain from her skull and carry it far, far, where she could feel it throb and jump and ache no more— And then, one day, John Suydam died and left her a million dollars. * * * * * CHAPTER VI. SUYDAM’S LEGACY AND HERMIA’S WILL. Hermia attended her uncle’s funeral because Frank came over and insisted upon it; and she and her brother-in-law were the only mourners. But few people were in the church, a circumstance which Hermia remembered later with gratitude. The Suydams had lived on Second Avenue since Second Avenue had boasted a brick or brownstone front, but no one cared to assume a respect he did not feel. Among the tablets which graced the interior of St. Mark’s was one erected to the dead man’s father, who had left many shekels to the diocese; but John Suydam was lowered into the family vault with nothing to perpetuate his memory but his name and the dates of his birth and death engraved on the silver plate of his coffin. Hermia took no interest in her uncle’s death; she was even past the regret that she would be the poorer by twenty-five dollars a year. When she received the letter from Suydam’s lawyer, informing her that she was heiress to a million dollars, her hands shook for an hour. At first she was too excited to think connectedly. She went out and took a long walk, and physical fatigue conquered her nerves. She returned home and sat down on the edge of her bed and thought it all out. The world was under her feet at last. With such a fortune she could materialize every dream of her life. She would claim her place in society here, then go abroad, and in the old world forget the Nineteenth Century. She would have a house, each of whose rooms should be the embodiment of one of that strange medley of castles she had built in the land of her dreams. And men would love her—she was free to love in fact instead of in fancy—free to go forth and in the crowded drawing-rooms of that world not a bird’s flight away find the lover whose glance would be recognition.