"Bless them!" she murmured, as she realized how happy must be their hearts that morning. "And that is why they are astir so soon. They do not usually arise until nearly eight o'clock." As she stood gazing longingly at the house, she saw Constance emerge from the rear, and scatter wheat to a few chickens they had taken a delight in raising the past summer. "If I could only go to her in this minute, and feel her caress for just a moment, I would leave the city the happiest woman in the world." She stopped when she had said this. To realize that she was slipping out of the city like a criminal, without greeting the friends she had there, made her feel peculiarly guilty. She had no enmity in her heart toward anyone--not even the man who haunted her into the position she now assumed, and whose sole purpose had been to satisfy an animal desire. She knew she could not go to Constance, nor to Mother Jane's--nor to anyone. She would leave the city without saying goodbye to a soul. She turned her face away, as she recalled that she had left Cincinnati the same way. She had no friends there, and had avoided making acquaintances. She almost choked with guilty anguish as she asked herself: "Is it always to be this way? Am I forever to go from place to place under cover like a criminal? Am I always to be without friends?" She couldn't make answer. She could have a certain kind of friends; but she shuddered when she realized what kind they would be. She had never told anyone the secret. She had no desire, strangely, to do so. Only one person among those she loved knew it, she now conjectured. And she would leave to be near him soon. He knew--a part of it ... and he had turned away and had passed out of her life, when he learned it. He would never come back; he would never forget it--and even if, through any possible chance, she proved to him that it was all a very different problem, could he ever forgive her? Perhaps that was what made it harder to bear. She almost believed he would not. In reading his book, she had marked a cold, decided stand, and she felt that, if he had made up his mind against her, which he had apparently done, he was not likely to change.... It depended upon the strength of his resolutions. She could never get beyond a certain point in her dreams. But in spite of that fact, something within her longed to be near him; to see him; not to ask forgiveness--not to do anything; but just to be near him, that was all.