She sat staring into the fire for several minutes--from her eyes looked a will as strong as his. Then she rose and, her voice lower than before but vibrating, said: "All round us--here in New York--all over this country--away off in Europe--I can see them--I can feel them--SUFFERING! As you yourself said, it's HORRIBLY cold!" She drew herself up and faced him, a light in her eyes before which he visibly shrank. "Yes, it's YOUR business. But it shan't be mine or MY boy's!" And she left the room. In the morning she returned to Dawn Hill and arranged her affairs so that she would be free to go. Not since the spring day, nearly nine years before, when she began that Vergil lesson which ended in a lesson in the pitilessness of consequences that was not yet finished, had her heart been so light, so hopeful. In vain she reminded herself that the doing of this larger duty, so imperative, nevertheless endangered her father and mother. "They will be proud that I'm doing it," she assured herself. "For Gardiner's sake, as well as for mine, they'll be glad I separated him and myself from this debased life. They will--they MUST, since it is right!" And already she felt the easing of the bonds that had never failed to cut deeper into the living flesh whenever she had ventured to hope that she was at last growing used to them. "Free!" she said to herself exultantly. She dared to exult, but she did not dare to express to herself the hopes, the wild, incredible hopes, which the very thought of freedom set to quivering deep down in her, as the first warmth makes the life toss in its slumber in the planted seed. On Friday she came up to New York late in the afternoon, and in the evening went to the opera--for a last look round. As the lights were lowering for the rise of the curtain on the second act, Leonora and her husband entered the box. She had forgotten inviting them. She gave Leonora the chair in front and took the one behind--Millicent Rowland, whom she herself brought, had the other front seat. As her chair was midway between the two, she was seeing across Leonora's shoulders. Presently Dumont came in and took the chair behind Leonora's and leaned forward, his chin almost touching the slope of her neck as he talked to her in an undertone, she greatly amused or pretending to be. The light from the stage fell across Leonora's bosom, fell upon a magnificent string of graduated pearls clasped with a huge solitaire beyond question the string the jeweler's clerk had blunderingly shown her. And there was Dumont's heavy, coarse profile outlined against Leonora's cheek and throat, her cynical, sensuous profile showing just beyond.