different--brown and clear where it rippled over shallows and lisped around that strip of clean sand, and darkly smooth out in the deep current;--the deep current? Why! _that_ was possible! Of course there were "things" in the water that she might step on--slimy, creeping things!--which she was so afraid of. She remembered how afraid she had been that night on the mountain, of snakes. But the water was clean. She must have stood there a long time; the maids, in the basement laundry, said afterward that they saw her, her white hands clutching the rusty bars of the gate, looking down toward the river, for nearly an hour. Then Bingo whined, and she went into the house to comfort him; and as she stroked him gently, she said, "Yes, ... our river would be possible." But she would get so wet! "My skirts would be wet ..." So three days went by in profound preoccupation. Her mind was a battlefield, over which, back and forth, reeling and trampling, Love and Jealousy--old enemies but now allies!--flung themselves against Reason, which had no support but Fear. Each day Maurice's friendly letters arrived; one of them--as Jealousy began to rout Reason and Love to cast out Fear--she actually forgot to open! Mrs. Newbolt called her up on the telephone once, and said, "Come 'round to dinner; my new cook is pretty poor, but she's better than yours." Eleanor said she had a little cold. "Cold?" said Mrs. Newbolt. "My gracious! don't come near _me_! I used to tell your dear uncle I was more afraid of a cold than I was of Satan! He said a cold _was_ Satan; and I said--" Eleanor hung up the receiver. So she was alone--and the wind blew, and the straws and leaves danced over that battlefield of her empty mind, and she said: