His continued tenderness gave her reason to believe that this assurance was justified. Only at the gate, when he bade her good-night, did he seem to be seized once more in the grip of contending emotions. He started to go without a word or kiss, then, turning back, he took her in his arms with a grip that hurt, calling her his Lena, his little girl, his wife. The last word broke from him with an intensity that caused the blood to riot in her heart, a joy that was shot through with wondering fear of the passion she had aroused. When his figure had disappeared in the darkness, she left the gate and entered the kitchen through the low window which the cook had left unlocked against her coming. She lighted a candle, and looked at herself curiously in a mirror that hung on the wall. The grain of the cheap glass distorted her features, but reflected faithfully her heightened colour and the drops that sparkled like jewels in her light hair. Apparently she was satisfied with the inspection, for she smiled happily, and then went slowly upstairs to her narrow room beneath the roof. Meanwhile, Emmet was striding along the gleaming street, regardless of the increasing rain that soaked him to the skin. From time to time he shot out his arm violently, as if he would push back some invisible foe, or would extricate himself from the meshes of a net that was closing in upon him. Again, he swore aloud, as one who curses a malign and unmerited fate. CHAPTER VII THE STAR-GAZERS In the following night the storm terminated its triduan existence some time between darkness and dawn. It must have been in the earlier hours that the change occurred, for Warwick gazed from its windows in the morning to find the ground rimed with hoar-frost, that looked like streaks of crusted salt. The sun was scarcely three hours in the ascendant before the frost disappeared, like the withdrawal of a silvery veil, disclosing the bareness it had beautified so briefly. Even the most casual observer could now see that autumn had made a long forward march in the last three days toward the confines of winter. That afternoon Leigh called upon Miss Wycliffe, not without a thought that the interval which had elapsed since the dinner was decidedly short. Still, he would come ostensibly to report the result of the interview she had suggested, and, as the election was not far distant, he felt that this excuse, if one were needed, was entirely adequate. To his chagrin, he found that she was not at home. The maid informed him further that she had gone to New York for a week. As he walked slowly away, he wondered almost resentfully at this sudden disappearance, as if he felt that she ought to stay in Warwick and watch the result of her experiment. But he did not consider that if the daughters of men would be clothed like the lilies of the field, they must seek periodically the place most remote from the solitude in which their models grow.