As she had driven away from Charing Cross Station, a month ago, after seeing her husband aboard the Dover and Calais special, she had breathed--breathed--breathed--stretched her arms and hands out to London, felt on her eye and brow a dew that meant the very dawning of liberty broke for her, and that she was for the time at least blessed by it, and free. The Sorghams' London house had opened its refuge wide for her, and she had gone into it like a child, to sleep and rest, and there she had grown up again, to begin to think and to plan, project and puzzle as those who grow up must do. She had never thought to such practical purpose as she did in these days, and never come so nearly reaching an end. Just before dressing for dinner on this night, at the sensation the touch of her husband's telegram gave her, she realized how near to a not unusual decision she was, and when she put the envelope by with the rest of her mail, the part of her mind which she would not let herself look into was in confusion and doubt. More effectively than Falconer's coming could have done, his few telegraphed words brought him to his wife's consideration. And the fantastic story of The Dials helped her, ridiculous as it was, burlesque as it was, to think; in the very humor of it, a shock, and helped her more reasonably to consider what otherwise her feelings would have turned to tragedy. Jimmy's ecstasies about the place recurred to her with renewed cordiality. He had spent an hour at least describing it, and when he had finished with "A woman must be there, it is made for a woman," Mary Falconer had only seen herself in the frame that the old place presented. She exclaimed aloud: "Oh, no, no," and continued to affirm to herself that it was too fantastically absurd--"Jimmy!" "It's only some delightful bit of charity, and he's too afraid of my wretched conservatism and my ironies to have told me frankly about it." Having in a very unfeminine way opened a crack for reason, its honest face peered through, and Mary Falconer glanced at it with a sigh and a half-amused recognition, as if she had not been face to face with anything so cool and eminent for a long time.