She thought of the organ, and descending to the art gallery, played Bach, Palestrina, and Stainer for an hour; then suddenly she started from the console, with a sharp, impatient movement of her head. "Why do I play this stupid music?" she exclaimed. She called a servant and asked: "Has Mr. Jadwin come in yet?" "Mr. Gretry just this minute telephoned that Mr. Jadwin would not be home to-night." When the servant had gone out Laura, her lips compressed, flung up her head. Her hands shut to hard fists, her eye flashed. Rigid, erect in the middle of the floor, her arms folded, she uttered a smothered exclamation over and over again under her breath. All at once anger mastered her--anger and a certain defiant recklessness, an abrupt spirit of revolt. She straightened herself suddenly, as one who takes a decision. Then, swiftly, she went out of the art gallery, and, crossing the hallway, entered the library and opened a great writing-desk that stood in a recess under a small stained window. She pulled the sheets of note paper towards her and wrote a short letter, directing the envelope to Sheldon Corthell, The Fine Arts Building, Michigan Avenue. "Call a messenger," she said to the servant who answered her ring, "and have him take--or send him in here when he comes." She rested the letter against the inkstand, and leaned back in her chair, looking at it, her fingers plucking swiftly at the lace of her dress. Her head was in a whirl. A confusion of thoughts, impulses, desires, half-formed resolves, half-named regrets, swarmed and spun about her. She felt as though she had all at once taken a leap--a leap which had landed her in a place whence she could see a new and terrible country, an unfamiliar place--terrible, yet beautiful--unexplored, and for that reason all the more inviting, a place of shadows. Laura rose and paced the floor, her hands pressed together over her heart. She was excited, her cheeks flushed, a certain breathless exhilaration came and went within her breast, and in place of the intolerable ennui of the last days, there came over her a sudden, an almost wild animation, and from out her black eyes there shot a kind of furious gaiety. But she was aroused by a step at the door. The messenger stood there, a figure ridiculously inadequate for the intensity of all that was involved in the issue of the hour--a weazened, stunted boy, in a uniform many sizes too large. Laura, seated at her desk, held the note towards him resolutely. Now was no time to hesitate, to temporise. If she did not hold to her resolve now, what was there to look forward to? Could one's life be emptier than hers--emptier, more intolerable, more humiliating? "Take this note to that address," she said, putting the envelope and a coin in the boy's hand. "Wait for an answer." The boy shut the letter in his book, which he thrust into his breast pocket, buttoning his coat over it. He nodded and turned away.