“But yes,” he answered impatiently. He returned the glove to its box, carefully tying the tasselled cord. Then, after clumsily helping her with the cape, he accompanied her to the elevator. “There were other things,” he told her. “Did you see the letters about the Hesperia affair? Heaps of them. Rodin.... But what can you expect in a world where there is no safety--” The stopping cage cut off his remark. She held out the hand that was less real to him than the dream. “Good-by, Dodge.” “Yes, Linda. But watch that door, your skirt might easily be caught in it.” He fussed over her safety until, abruptly, he seemed to rise in space, shut out from her by the limitations of her faith. The evening overshadowed her in the train, as though she were whirling in the swiftest passage possible, through an indeterminate grayness, from day to night. The latter descended on her as she reached the steps of her home. It was still that; now it would continue to be until death. Nothing could ever again offer her change, release, vindication; nothing, that was, which might give her, for a day, what even her mother had plentifully experienced--the igniting exultation of the body. It was inevitable, she thought, for Arnaud to be in the library. He rose unsteadily as she stood in the doorway. “Linda,” he articulated with difficulty. A book had rested open on the table beside him and, closing it, he put it back in its place. His arm trembled so that it took a painfully long while. Then he moved forward, still confused. “What a confounded time you were gone. I had the most idiotic fancy. You see, it was so unlike you; none more exact in habit. All day. I didn't get to the Historical Society, it seemed so devilish far off. I'd never blame you for leaving an old man without any gumption.” He must never think that again, she replied. Wasn't she, too, middle-aged? XL Linda admitted, definitely, the loss of her youth; and yet a stubborn inner conviction remained that she was unchanged. In this she had for support her appearance; practically she was as freshly and gracefully pale as the girl who had married Arnaud Hallet. Even Vigné, with indelible traces of her motherhood, had faint lines absent from Linda's flawless countenance. Her children, and Arnaud, were immensely proud of her beauty; it had become a part--in the form of her ridiculously young air--of the family conversational resources. She was increasingly aware of its supreme significance to her.