Two hours later there was a tap at Miss Billy Breeze's door, at the Old North Hotel. "Come in," said Miss Billy. "Oh, is it you, Lilian? I am glad to see you. I haven't been out this afternoon, as it seemed a little coolish!" Mrs. Kip looked excited. "Coolish, Billy?" she repeated, standing still in the centre of the room. "Ish? _Ish?_ And I, too, have said it; I don't pretend to deny it. But it is over at last, and I am free! I have been--been different for some time. But I did not know _how_ different until this very afternoon. I met him at Maud Muriel's barn, soon after two. And I sat there, and looked at him and _looked_ at him. And suddenly it came across me that _perhaps_ after all I didn't care _quite_ so much for him. I was so nervous that I could scarcely speak, but I did manage to ask him to take a little stroll with me. For you see I wanted to be perfectly _sure_. And as he walked along beside me, putting down his feet in that precise sort of way he does, and every now and then saying 'ish'--like a great light in the dark, like a falling off of _chains_, I knew that it was at last at an end--that he had ceased to be all the world to me. And it was such an _enormous_ relief that when I came back, if there had been a circus or a menagerie in town, I give you my word I should certainly have gone to it--as a celebration! And then, Billy, I thought of _you_. And I made up my mind that I would come right straight over here and ask you--_Is_ he worth it? What has Achilles Larue ever done for either of us, Billy, but just snub, snub, snub? and crush, crush, crush? If you could only feel what a joy it is to have that tiresome old ache gone! And to just _know_ that he is hateful!" And Lilian, much agitated, took Billy's hand in hers. But Billy, dim and pale, drew herself away. "You do him great injustice, Lilian. But he has never expected the ordinary mind to comprehend him. Your intentions, of course, are good, and I am obliged to you for them. But I am not like you; to me it is a pleasure, and always will be, as well as a constant education, to go on admiring the greatest man I have ever known!" "Whether he looks at you or not?" demanded Lilian. "Whether he looks at me or not," answered Billy, firmly. "If you had ever been _married_, Wilhelmina, you would know that you could not go on forever living on _shadows_!" declared the widow as she took leave. "Shadows may be all very well. But we are human, after all, and we need _realities_." Having decided upon a new reality, her step was so joyous that Horace Chase, coming home from his long ride to Crumb's, hardly recognized her, as he passed her in the twilight. At L'Hommedieu he found no one in the sitting-room but Dolly. "Ruth is resting after our drive," explained the elder sister. "I took her first to the barn to see Maud Muriel's torso, and that made her laugh tremendously. Well, is The Lodge in order?"