But Horatio Fielding was out of the room. An hour later at the station John Maxwell saw him step stiffly into the sleeper for the West, and, shrugging his shoulders, he turned away and went rapidly up the street. Walking toward Pelham Place, he reached the house in which Miss Gibbie was waiting, but he could not trust himself to go in. At the door he left a note, then walked down King Street and into the Calverton road. For hours he walked. The moon, clear and serene, hung calmly above him, and in the sandy road shadows cast by the stripped branches of trees and shrubs swayed and danced, beckoned or stood still. The air was cold and stinging, and the silence, soft as the pale light of the meaningless moon, was unbroken save by the whispering of the wind. Presently at the top of a hill he sat down under a big bare tree and leaned his back against it. Far off in the distance the lights of Yorkburg twinkled like fireflies in the hazy darkness, and at his left a soft, luminous ball was gathering into shape and brilliance. With a roar it rushed through the outskirts of the little town before its long black tail of cars could be defined, and as its vibrations reached him John struck a match and took out his watch. "The one-twelve," he said, "and fifteen minutes late." A cigar was lighted slowly, and a long, deep whiff taken. Watching its spirals of smoke curl lazily upward, his eyes narrowed and he nodded toward them. "When the Lord made woman"--he was looking now at a light in a group of trees not very far away--"I wonder if He ever realized the trouble she could give a man!" Chapter XXVI THE SURRENDER Save the light from the shaded lamp on the library-table and the glow of the dancing flames on the hearth, the room was in shadow. Mary Cary had drawn the curtains, straightened chairs and books, rearranged the flowers, refilled the inkstand on her open desk, brushed the bits of charred wood under the logs on the andirons, turned on every light, and then, seeing nothing else to do that would permit of movement, had taken her seat near the table. John Maxwell, standing by the mantelpiece, watched her with eyes half amused, half impatient, but with no comment, and for some minutes neither had spoken. When she was seated, however, a magazine in her lap, he walked around the room and turned off all lights except that of the lamp; then came back and took the chair opposite hers. "This is such an interesting number," she said, opening the magazine and shuffling its pages as if they were cards. "I suppose you have seen it?" "No. I haven't seen it." He leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees, his eyes holding her steadily. "Don't you think, Mary, this foolishness between us has gone on long enough?" "What foolishness?" She put the magazine on the table and tapped it with her fingers, looking away from him and into the leaping flames. "Has there been any foolishness between us? I didn't know it." "What would you call it?"