She had the avenue almost entirely to herself, a silent gleaming thoroughfare with the gracious emptiness that a much lived in street sometimes acquires, of a Sunday at the end of an adventurous season. It was early July, the beginning of the actual summer season in New York. Nancy had never before been in town so late in the year, nor for that matter had Caroline or Betty, but Betty's interest in the affairs of the Inn was keeping her at Nancy's side, while Caroline had just accepted a secretarial position in one of the big Industrial Leagues recently organized by women for women, that would keep her in town all summer. Billy and Dick, by virtue of their respective occupations, were never away from New York for longer than the customary two weeks' vacation. "My soul smoothed itself out, a long cramped scroll,"--her conscience placated on the score of her deserted guests, Nancy was quoting Browning to herself, as she widened the distance between herself and them. "I wonder why I have this irresistible tendency to shake the people I love best in the world at intervals. I am such a really well-balanced and rational individual, I don't understand it in myself. I thought the Inn was going to take all the nonsense out of me, but it hasn't, it appears," she sighed; "but then, I think it is going to take the nonsense out of a lot of people that are only erratic because they have never been properly fed. I guess I'll go and have a look at the old place in its Sunday evening calm. Already it seems queer not to be there at nine o'clock in the evening, but I don't really think there are people enough in New York now on Sundays to make it an object." Nancy's feet turned mechanically toward the arena of her most serious activities. Like most of us who run away, she was following by instinct the logical periphery of her responsibilities. The big green latticed gate was closed against all intruders. Nancy had the key to its padlock in her hand-bag, but she had no intention of using it. The white and crimson sign flapped in the soft breeze companionably responsive to the modest announcement, "Marble Workshop, Reproductions and Antiques, Garden Furniture," which so inadequately invited those whom it might concern to a view of the petrified vaudeville within. Through the interstices of the gate the courtyard looked littered and unalluring;--the wicker tables without their fine white covers; the chairs pushed back in a heterogeneous assemblage; the segregated columns of a garden peristyle gaunt against the dark, gleamed a more ghostly white than the weather-stained busts and figures less recently added to the collection. It seemed to Nancy incredible that the place would ever bloom again with lights and bouquets and eager patrons, with her group of pretty flower-like waitresses moving deftly among them. She stared at the spot with the cold eye of the creator whose handiwork is out of the range of his vision, and the inspiration of it for the moment, gone.