She turned and went in the opposite direction from the one in which they had started, going into the first big department store and retiring to the ladies’ waiting-room where she wrote a letter to her father, and mailed it. Then, having made sure she was rid of Ted she went home. The afternoon dragged along. She read and thought and on an impulse went out again to go to the railway station and get some time tables. She wanted to see just how far Gregory had been away from her when he last wrote. Each time the postman approached the house there was a leap of her heart. Four times a day he came and each time he brought fresh hope. She would play tricks on herself as she went down to look in the mail box she shared with the people who rented the apartment in which she stayed. Each time she put her hand in the box she hesitated before she looked, then looked quickly as if to catch fate before it tricked her. But it would be an advertisement of a corset firm for Mrs. Miller, an envelope with unmistakable savor of a bill about it, a postcard, a white Louisine envelope with a woman’s handwriting on it. How she hated all the flatness of the Miller mail. Each envelope she took in her hands seemed to be mischievously metamorphosed into one of these stupid envelopes which represented such dull contact with the outside world. Nothing to do but to go upstairs and read all over again the old messages of love from him--to wear her wedding ring in the privacy of her room--to make endless computations on the presumable date of her child’s birth--to read with unfailing zest and yet slight nausea the rather mawkish pages of “What Every Mother Should Know” which she had shamefacedly but defiantly bought at a book shop, feeling the necessity for some practical knowledge of marriage. * * * * * The next day, breaking through her apprehension and her waiting, cutting across her vague fears, came the letter. It lay between an announcement of the opening of a new hair dressing parlor and Mr. Miller’s water and light bill. How could she hope that the other white envelope would be anything more interesting? Then she turned it over and the address stared at her blackly. It was addressed to Mrs. Gregory Macmillan, in an unfamiliar hand, postmarked at the town from which Gregory had last written. Gregory always addressed her letters to Freda Thorstad to avoid any explanations to the Millers. A quick faint fear came over her. She almost crushed the letter as she flew up the stairs and with her back against her door faced the envelope again. Then steeling her mind and her heart, presenting only outer senses to what blow it might contain, she opened it. The written words made their sense clear, like some amazingly vital story that thrilled every nerve. “MY DEAR MRS. MACMILLAN: