It was Dick Le Geyt, but younger and handsomer than Annette had ever known him. She looked long at it, slowly realizing that this, then, had been the home of Dick's mistress, the Mary of whom he had spoken and her child, to whom he had done a tardy justice in his will, the will she had helped him to make. The child, Dick's child, was dead. Its empty crib was in the corner. Its memorials had perished with it. All that was left now of that little home was Dick's faded photograph smiling in its frame, purposely, vindictively left when all the others had been destroyed. Mary Deane had not cared to take it with her when she cut herself adrift from her past. She had not had the clemency to destroy it with the rest. She had left it to smile mockingly across the ruins of the deserted nursery. While Annette stood motionless the fierce despair of the mother became almost visible to her: the last wild look round the room and at the empty crib, the eyes averted from the smiling face on the mantelpiece, and then--the closed door and the lagging, hurrying footfall on the stairs. "It's no use being angry," she whispered again. "Even Dick knew that. No use. No use." And with pitying hands she took Dick's photograph out of the frame and tore it up small, and thrust the pieces among the charred remains of his child's toys. It was all she could do for him. Oh! if she had but known Mary Deane, if she could but have come to her, and put her arms round her and told her that Dick had not been as heartless as she thought, that he had remembered her at the last, and as far as he could had made a late amends for all the evil he had done her. But the child was dead, and Mary Deane herself was gone. Gone whither? She had flung away in anger and despair, as she, Annette, had once flung away. Perhaps there had been no Mrs. Stoddart to care for Mary in her hour of need. Annette's heart sank as if a cold hand had been laid upon it. The peaceful, radiant faith and joy of a few hours ago--where were they now? In their place, into this close, desolate room with the dead bird on the sill, came an overwhelming fear. Men were cruel, ruthless creatures, who did dreadful things to women under the name of love.