The hour before the dawn was more than dark. It was dreary. In the morning I did not care to go out, and no one came except one strange man who besieged the door--there have been many such here recently, dunning and dunning and dunning, until my patience was worn to shreds. This was a decent-looking fellow with a thin face, a mustache dyed black and a carefully unkeen expression that noticed everything. "Miss Winship?" he said, and upon my acknowledging the name, he placed a paper in my hands and went away. I was so relieved because he said nothing about wanting "a little money on account;" he wasn't even coarsely insolent, like so many of them. He did look surprised at my appearance; so surprised that his explanation of his errand died away into an unintelligible murmur. But I wasn't curious about it. I tried to read a newspaper, only to gather from some headlines that Strathay and his cousin were passengers by an out-going steamship. I wonder if it was all money, money, that kept him from me--or was it more than half the fear of beauty? I couldn't read anything else, not even a note from Mrs. Marmaduke; it was dated from her country place; she hoped to see me--"in the autumn!" Peggy is in Europe; the General's going if she's not gone already. "May see you at the wedding of that odd Miss Bryant," ran her last brusque message. "I begged an invitation; really I like her. But the chances are against my being here." All gone, I thought; my last hope, all my friends. There was a note from Mrs. Baker; I compelled myself to glance at that, and when I had done so, seized my hat and veil. She would call, it said, that afternoon! With no thought but of escape, I left the house; I cared not where I went, nor what I did. I knew the Judge had sent Aunt Frank to pry into my troubles; I walked with feverish haste, I would have liked to fly to avoid her. My hands shook. Oh, I was wretched! As I passed the Park, I saw that spring had leaped to summer and the trees waved fresh, green branches in the air--just such trees as John and I walked under, less than a year ago, making great plans for a golden future; and a golden future there must be, but I had then no hope of it, no joy in life, no happiness even in my beauty. One only thought spurred me on, to forget past, present and future; to buy forgetfulness by any caprice; to win diversion by any adventure. After some time I saw that I was in a side street whose number seemed familiar; self-searching at last recalled to me that on this street lived two rival faith healers, about whose lively competition for clients Cadge had once told us girls a funny story. Could there have come to my thought some hope of finding rest from sorrow in the leading of another mind? Impossible to say. I was near insanity, I think. I chose the nearer practitioner and rang the bell.