That afternoon she wrote to Dumont: Since we had our talk I have found out about Leonora. It is impossible for me to stay here. I shall go West to-morrow. But I shall not go to my father's; because of your circular I shall go to the Eyrie, instead--at least for the present. PAULINE DUMONT. Two weeks after she was again settled at the Eyrie, Langdon appeared in Saint X, alleging business at the National Woolens' factories there. He accepted her invitation to stay with her, and devoted himself to Gladys, who took up her flirtation with him precisely where she had dropped it when they bade each the other a mock-mournful good-by five months before. They were so realistic that Pauline came to the satisfying conclusion that her sister-in-law was either in earnest with Langdon or not in earnest with anybody. If she had not been avoiding Scarborough, she would probably have seen Gladys' real game--to use Langdon as a stalking horse for him. "No doubt Scarborough, like all men, imagines he's above jealousy," Gladys had said to herself, casting her keen eyes over the situation. "But there never was a man who didn't race better with a pace-maker than on an empty track." Toward the end of Langdon's first week Pauline's suspicions as to one of the objects of his winter trip West were confirmed by his saying quite casually: "Dumont's dropped Fanshaw, and Leonora's talking of the stage. In fact, she's gone abroad to study." When he was leaving, after nearly three weeks, he asked her when she was coming back East. "Never--I hope," she said, her fingers playing with the close-cropped curls of her boy standing beside her. "I fancied so--I fancied so," replied Langdon, his eyes showing that he understood her and that he knew she understood for whom he had asked. "You are going to stay on--at the Eyrie?" "I think so, unless something--disquieting--occurs. I've not made up my mind. Fate plays such queer tricks that I've stopped guessing at to-morrow." "What was it Miss Dumont's friend, Scarborough, quoted from Spinoza at Atwater's the other night? 'If a stone, on its way from the sling through the air, could speak, it would say, "How free I am!'" Is that the way you feel?" There came into Pauline's eyes a look of pain so intense that he glanced away. "We choose a path blindfold," she said, her tone as light as her look was dark, "and we must go where it goes--there's no other ever afterward." "But if it leads down?" "All the PATHS lead up," she replied with a sad smile. "It's the precipices that lead down." Gladys joined them and Langdon said to her: