Left rudderless by his silence, she cast about eagerly for some new plan of action while she dressed. Last night she had meant to order her things sent to the studio until they could plan the future, but that course seemed feasible no longer. She searched her pocketbook for funds and found only tickets for a popular comedy. She smiled upon them grimly. Comedy, forsooth! Here was more comic stuff--the screaming farce of woman's lot! Flouted, she had no choice but to fold her hands and wait while the dominant male in his wisdom decided her destiny. At her accustomed hour she touched the bell for her coffee, and with sharpened observation saw at once that, unlike other days, the tray held but a single service. "Mr. Atwood breakfasted downstairs?" she said carelessly. The maid's eyes roved the dissipated scene of Atwood's reflections and lit upon a strapped trunk which Jean had for convenience pulled into the dressing-room. "Yes," she answered. "Mr. Craig came down very early." "Did he go out?" "More than an hour ago." Jean let the coffee go cold and crumbled her toast untasted. How could she endure this passivity! Must she forever be the spectator? Amidst these drab reveries her eyes rested for some minutes upon the topmost of the morning papers, which the maid had brought as usual with the breakfast, before one of its by no means modest head-lines resolved itself into the words,-- MURDERED IN CENTRAL PARK Then a familiar name and a familiar address leaped from the context, and she seized breathlessly upon the brief double-leaded paragraph and read it twice from end to end. "The northern extremity of Central Park," ran the account, "became last night the scene of a tragedy which its loneliness and insufficient lighting have long invited. Shortly after midnight the body of Frederic Chapman, a commercial traveler in the employ of Webster, Cassell & Co., residing in the Lorna Doone apartments, not ten blocks from the spot where he met his death, was found with a bullet through the heart. Up to the time of going to press, no trace of the murderer or weapon had been discovered, although the physician summoned by Officer Burns, who came upon the body in his regular rounds, was of the opinion that life had been extinct less than an hour. Both precinct and central office detectives are at work upon the case. Mr. Chapman leaves a young widow, who is prostrated by the blow." Jean sprang to her feet, her own woes forgotten in her horrified perception of Amy's dire need. Tearing out the paragraph, she penciled across its head-lines, "I have gone to her," and enclosing it in an envelope addressed to Atwood, set it conspicuously on his desk. XXIX