d spoken was balm
to me. Everything could be put off--put off.... To put things off
indefinitely, hide them out of sight, dodge them somehow! Why, she was
voicing the one weary cry of my soul!

And so, within three days, this supreme folly was accomplished. Mona
Leslie and I stole across the river in secret to little Jeanne-Marie's
meagerly attended "funeral of the first class," and with Madame Guyot,
Doctor Pollain, and a few casual neighbors, we followed her coffin from
the vast drafty dreariness of St. Sulpice to the wintry, crowded alleys
of the cemetery of Montparnasse.--That very evening Susan left with Miss
Leslie for Mentone.

She was glad enough to go, she said, for a week or two. "But Ambo--what
shall I say to Jimmy? Will he ever forgive me for not having been able
to make friends, first, with Jeanne-Marie? And it's all your fault,
dear; you must tell him that--say you've been downright cross with me
about it. I wish now I hadn't listened to you; I feel perfectly well
to-night; I've no business to be starting on a holiday. But I shan't
stay long, Ambo. I'll be back in Paris before little Jimmy arrives; I
promise you that. And here's a letter to post, dear; I've said so in it
to Jeanne-Marie."

* * * * *

A dark train drew out of a dark station. With it went Hope, the shadow,
silently, from my heart....

VIII

The days passed. Mentone, Miss Leslie wrote me, was doing everything
for Susan that we had desired. "But she is determined," she added, "to
be back in Paris by the last week of February--when the baby was
expected. She begins to be bothered that you write so scrappily and
vaguely, and that she hears nothing directly from Lieutenant Kane or
Jeanne-Marie. I shall have to tell her soon now, in any case. It seems
more difficult as I come nearer to it, but I still feel sure we have
done the right thing. I'm certain now that Susan will be able to face
and bear it. Already she's full of plans for the future--wonderful!
Possibly, if an opportunity offers, I shall tell her to-night."

The next afternoon my telephone rang. When I answered it, Susan spoke to
me. "Ambo," she said, "I'm at the France-et-Choiseul. Please come over
at once, no matter how busy you are. You owe that much to me, I think."
She had hung up the receiver before I could stammer a reply.

But nothing more was necessary. I went to her as a criminal goes to
confession, knowing at last how hideously in her