She hadn’t slept. This, since coming home last night, was a show-down time, as she expressed it. She had met the same several times with her father, when the days became so black and evil that something had to happen. Deep, under words and surface thoughts, lay the affair of Fanny’s room. The dreary consciousness of that never left her, but actual thinking of details was another affair. She couldn’t give way to them, and keep the outer quiet she had determined upon. She had been too honest to hide from herself, even in the beginning, that Rufe habitually took life as it came. She never could forget his first appraisal of herself in the reception room of _The Public Square_. So this hadn’t come in the nature of shock; rather it was a pitiless uncovering of ugliness that had been vaguely subconscious before. What hurt her most keenly, so that she was close to crying out, as she lay beside him in the night, was the inevitable tramp of Fate, audible through it all--their meeting in Dicky’s room; Dicky’s opening of _The Public Square_ to him in the first place; her own bringing of Fanny Gallup to this house; the weaving back and forth into one, of the different lives--even her father’s. Rufe wasn’t at home when she returned that night. He hadn’t rung her at the office, but she found word with Miss Claes that he had gone down to Washington. She felt something was going to happen, but through the day she had gathered her strength together to decide that she wouldn’t be the one to bring it about. Underneath all was the old sense of her responsibility. Pidge was half tempted to seek Miss Claes this night. She even went so far as to learn that her friend was at home. It always happened so, when she needed help: Miss Claes might be out any or at all other times. A light was in the basement room, and no voices, but Pidge crept back upstairs without speaking.... She had failed. She had run away from her father, failing there; failing here. She must see this through alone a little longer.... The next afternoon Rufe called for her at _The Public Square_. His eyes held a glint of triumph. “I’m going to France,” he said, when they were in the street. “I’ve arranged to do a big feature for Redge Walters and a Sunday newspaper syndicate set.” “But how about the draft?” “Went down to Washington to start things going to fix that. Redge gave me letters. Looks as if there won’t be much trouble. You see, the Government needs the writers--public sentiment, you know.” It wasn’t that Pidge didn’t think of things to say on this point of making public sentiment, but a great gray ennui was over her. She had said enough about his faults. “You know, I’ve been smothering in Harrow Street--had to get away,” he added. “Yes, I know, Rufe.” After a time, she said, “I think it’s a good thing.” “That’s the way to look at it, Pan,” he said in a relieved voice, and confided: “I need the experience, too, you know, because I’ve never been to Europe----”