She vanished like the creature of nightmare she was, but the nightmare remained. Paul would demand his reckoning now. He would come and stand over her with his accusing face and ask her what this horror meant. She could not go to him, she felt, or at least unless he sent. But throughout that endless forenoon the dentist kept to his office, though twice there were intervals when she knew him to be alone. Her lunch hour--and his--came at last. She lingered, but still Paul delayed. At last, driven by an imperative craving to be done with it, she hurried to his room and found it empty. Grimes told her that he had seen Paul leave the place by a side door. The news was a dagger-thrust in her pride. Of a surety, now, he must seek her. Between five o'clock and six, a dull hour, he came, woebegone and conciliatory. "For God's sake, clear this up," he begged. "Haven't you anything to say?" "A great deal, Paul. But first tell me what that woman said about me." "You heard." "But what else?" "Nothing." "Nothing!" The thing was incredible. "Only that you'd probably be glad to explain things yourself." At that half her burden fell. Stella's cunning had overreached itself. She had thought to rack her victim most by forcing her to betray herself, but she had reasoned from the false premise that Jean had a truly shameful past to conceal. "Glad," she repeated. "Yes, I am glad. I should have told you some day, Paul. It's a long story." The door opened to admit a caller with a swollen jowl. "To-night, then?" said the dentist, hurriedly. "Yes," she assented. "I will tell you to-night." "At the flat?" "Yes; at the flat." Spurred on by her unrest, she reached the Lorna Doone before Paul had returned from his evening meal, and found the flat in darkness. She was relieved that this was so. It would give her a quiet interval in which to turn over what she meant to say. She entered the little parlor and seated herself in an open window where a shy midsummer-night's breeze, astray from river or sound, stole gently in and out and fingered her hair. It was wonderfully peaceful for a city. The sounds from below--the footsteps on the pavement, the cries of children at play under the young elms lining the avenue, the jests of the cigar-store loungers, the chatter of the girls thronging the soda-fountain at the corner druggist's, the jingle of bicycle bells, the beat of hoofs, the honk of occasional automobiles, even the strains of a hurdy-gurdy out-Heroding Sousa--one and all ascended, mellowed by distance to something not unmusical and cheerily human. She realized, as she listened, that the city, not the country, this city, this very corner, this hearth which she and Paul had prepared, was at last and truly home. Presently she heard Paul's latch-key in the lock and his step in the dark corridor. "You here?" he called tonelessly. "Better have a light, hadn't we?"