All her soldier friends, old playmates, youthful compeers, elder associates, marched away without a farewell word from her,--a last farewell it would have been to many, who, alack, came never marching back again; for she was denied at the door to all callers, since her bruises were so deep and lacerated that she must needs keep her room in order that the conjugal happiness might not be impugned. For still she made excuses for Gwynn, sought to shield him from himself. He had begun to drink heavily under the sting of the universal financial disasters occasioned by the war which he also shared, supplemented by heavy losses at the gaming table and the race track and often "was not himself," as she phrased it. He was expert at repentance, practised in confession, and had a positive ingenuity for shifting responsibility to stronger shoulders. He could burst into torrents of protesting tears, and dramatically fling himself on his knees at her feet, and bury his face in her hands, covering them with kisses, and craving her pardon and help. And she would once more, inconsistently, hopefully, take up her faith in him anew, albeit it had all the tearful tremors of despair,--believing, yet doubting, with a strange duality of emotion impossible to the analysis of reason. Thus the curtain was rung up again, and the terrible tragedy of her life on this limited stage went on apace. He had infinite ingenuity in concealment, abetted by her silence in suffering which her pride fostered. Albeit her friends had divined his unkindness, the extent of his brutality was not suspected by them until one night when frightful screams had been heard to issue from the house, despite the closed and shuttered windows of winter weather. These were elicited by the sheer agony of being dragged by the hair through the rooms and halls and down the stairs, and thrust out into the chill of the fierce January freeze. She was given hardly time for the instinct of flight to assert itself, to rise up with wild eyes looking adown the snowy street; for the door opened, and he dragged her within once more, as a watchman of the precinct, Roanoke City being at this time heavily policed, ascended the steps to the portico with an inquiry as to the sound. He was satisfied with the explanation from the husband that Mrs. Gwynn was suffering with a violent attack of hysterics. But the next day, while the mistress of the house, bruised and almost shattered, lay half unconscious in her own room, the housemaid, in the hall polishing the stair rail and wainscot, was terrified to draw out here and there from the balusters great bloody lengths of Mrs. Gwynn's beautiful hair which had caught and held as she was dragged by it down the stairs. This rumor, taken in connection with the explanation of her screams offered by her husband to the watchman, occasioned Mrs. Gwynn's relatives great anxiety for her safety. It was with the view of discovering from her the