“Very well,” said Mrs. Dykman; “we will go if you think that traveling will cure you. But I cannot go for at least five weeks. Will that do?” “Yes,” said Hermia; “I suppose it will have to.” * * * * * CHAPTER XXXII. FUTURITY. A few days later Hermia had a singular experience. Bessie’s youngest child, her only boy, died. Hermia carried her sister from the room as the boy breathed his last, and laid her on a bed. As Bessie lay sobbing and moaning, sometimes wailing aloud, she seemed suddenly to fade from her sister’s vision. Hermia was alone, where she could not tell, in a room whose lineaments were too shadowy to define. Even her own outlines, seen as in a mirror held above, were blurred. Of one thing only was she sharply conscious: she was writhing in mortal agony—agony not of the body, but of the spirit. The cause she did not grasp, but the effect was a suffering as exquisite and as torturing as that of vitriol poured upon bare nerves. The insight lasted only a few seconds, but it was so real that she almost screamed aloud. Then she drifted back to the present and bent over her sister. But her face was white. In that brief interval her inner vision had pierced the depths of her nature, and what it saw there made her shudder. * * * * * CHAPTER XXXIII. CHAOS. She began to hate Cryder with a mortal hatred. When he left her he had flown down the perspective of her past, but now he seemed to be crawling back—nearer—nearer— Had it not been for him she might have loved Quintard. But he had scraped the gloss from life. He had made love commonplace, vulgar. She felt a sort of moral nausea whenever she thought of love. What an ideal would love have been with Quintard in this house! There was a barbaric, almost savage element in his nature which made him seem a part of these rooms and of that Indian wilderness. And every nook and corner was eloquent of Cryder! Sometimes she thought she would take another house. But she asked herself: Of what use? She had nothing left to give Quintard, and her house was his delight. She no longer pretended to analyze herself or to speculate on the future. Once, when sitting alone by Bessie’s bed in the night, she had opened the door of her mental photograph gallery and glanced down the room to that great, bare plate at the end. It was bare no longer. On its surface was an impression—what, she did not pause to ascertain. She shut the door hurriedly and turned the key.