Followed three letters less confident, and another very pitiful--a frightened letter asking him to come if he could. But his father's condition forbade it and he dared not. Then another letter came, desperate, almost incoherent, yet still bearing the red cross faintly traced. And on the heels of it a telegram: "Could you stand by me until this is over? I am afraid of to-night. Am on my way to town with my maid, very ill. I know you cannot leave your father except at night. I will telephone you from the house. "G.S." On the train a dispatch was handed her: "I will be at your house as soon as my father is asleep. Don't worry. "DUANE." Hour after hour she sat motionless beside the car-window, quiet, pale, dark eyes remote; trees, houses, trains, telegraph-poles streamed past in one gray, unending blur; rain which at first had only streaked the grimy window-glass with cinders, became sleet, then snow, clotting the dripping panes. At last, far away under a heavy sky, the vast misshapen landmarks of New York loomed up gray through the falling snow; the train roared over the Harlem, halted at 125th Street, rolled on into the black tunnel, faster, faster, slower, then more slowly, and stopped. All sounds ceased at the same moment; silence surrounded her, dreary as the ominous silence within. Dunn met her with a brougham; Fifth Avenue was slippery with filthy, melting slush; yet, somehow, into her mind came the memory of her return from her first opera--the white avenue at midnight, the carriage, lamps lighted, speeding through the driving snow. Yesterday, the quiet, untainted whiteness of childhood; to-day, trouble and stress and stained snow melting into mud--so far behind her lay innocence and peace on the long road she had travelled! So far had she already journeyed--toward what? She pressed her lips more tightly together and buried her chin in her sable muff. Beside her, her maid sat shivering and stifling yawn after yawn and thinking of dinner and creature comforts, and of Dunn, the footman, whom she did ardently admire.