The solitude was intense, the silence an awesome stillness, her thoughts, recurring to her own sorry fate, were strenuous and troublous, and thus even her strong, elastic young physique was beginning to feel very definitely the stress of fatigue, and excitement, and fear, that had filled the day as well as the effects of the emotional crisis which she had endured. She found that she could scarcely stand; indeed, she tottered with a sense of feebleness, of faintness, as she looked about for some support, something on which she might lean, or better still, something that might serve as a seat. Suddenly she started forward toward the window near the outer corner of the room. The low sill was broad and massive in conformity with the general design of the house, and she sank down here in comfort, resting her head against the heavy moulding of the frame. Her eyes turned without, and she noted with a certain interest the great foliated ornaments, the carved acanthus leaves of the capitals of the Corinthian columns, one of which was so close at hand that she might almost have touched it, for the roof of the portico here, which had been nearly on a level with the window, was now in great part torn away, giving a full view of the stone floor below. This column was the pilaster, half the bulk of the others, being buttressed against the wall. The size of the columns was far greater than she had supposed, looking at them from below, the capitals were finished with a fine attention to detail. The portico was indeed an admirable example of this sort of adapted architecture which is usually distinguished rather by its license than its success. But she had scant heart to mark its values or effect. Her reflections were introspective. She looked out drearily on the wan wastes of the skies, and the somber night closing in, and bethought herself of the woeful change in the atmosphere of her soul since the skies last darkened. She said to herself that illusions were made for women, who were not fitted to cope with facts, and that it was better to be a loving fool, gulled into the fancy that she, too, is beloved, than to see clearly, and judge justly, and harbor an empty aching heart. For there was no recourse for her. It was not in her power to frame her future. Her husband had, and he knew he had, the most complete impunity, and doubtless this gave him an assurance in domineering that he would not otherwise have dared to exert. He was cognizant of her delicate pride, the odium in which she would hold the idea of publicity in conjugal dissension. She would never have permitted, save under some extreme stress like that of the single instance of the morning, others to look in upon a difference between them, yet there had been from the first much to bear from his self-absorbed and imperious temper, and she had borne it to the extent of self-immolation, of self-extinction. In fact, she was not, she had not been for years, herself.