It was fall, October, and the day was a space of pale gold foliage wreathed in blue garlands of mist. The gardener was busy with a wooden rake and wheelbarrow in which he carted away dead leaves for burning. The fire was back of the low fence, in the rear, and Linda, at the dining-room window, could hear the fierce small crackle of flames; the drifting pungent smoke was like a faint breath of ammonia. Arnaud had left for the day, Lowrie was at the university, while Vigné and her husband--moving toward their ultimate colonial threshold--had taken a small house. She was alone. As usual. However, in her present state her solitude had lost its inevitability; she failed to see why it must continue until the end of time. She could no longer discover a sufficient reason for her limitless endurance, her placid acceptance of all that chance, or any inconsiderable person, happened to dictate. She wasn't like that in the least. Her temper had solidified as though it were ice, taking everywhere the form in which it was held. It was a reality. She determined, as well, that her feeling should not melt back into the familiar acceptance of a routine that had led her blindfolded across such an extent of life. She understood now, in a large part, her disturbance at the indignity to Dodge's monument--he had assured her that she was its inspiration; except for her it would never have been realized, he would have kept on modeling those Newport fountains, continued with the Susanna Nodas, spending himself ignobly. He loved her, and that love had resulted in a statue the world of art, of taste, honored. But it was she all the while they were approving, discussing, writing about, Linda Condon. She had always been that, Pleydon had informed her, never Linda Hallet--in spite of Arnaud and their children. It sounded like nonsense; but, at the bottom, it was truth. Of course it couldn't be explained, for example, to the man who had every right, every evidence, to consider himself her husband. Nothing was susceptible of explanation. Absolutely nothing! There was the earth, which appeared to be everything, the houses you entered, the streets you passed over, the people among whom you lived, yet that wasn't all. Heavens, no! It was quite unimportant compared with--with other facts latent in the mind and blood. Dodge Pleydon's love was one of those other facts; it was simply impossible to deny its existence, its power. Dodge had been totally changed by it, born over again. But she, who had been the source, had had no good from it, nothing except the thrill that had always been hers. No one knew of it, counted it as her achievement, paid the slightest attention to her. Arnaud smiled indulgently, Lowrie scoffed. When the statue had been thrown down they thought of it merely as a deplorable part of the day's news. They hadn't seen that she, Linda Condon, was unspeakably insulted.