d Roger. "And the nerve of him. Did you
hear his calm assumption that we have now become fast friends? Can you
beat it?"

But Judith said: "It's a long road to the station. I should have sent
the car." And then, suddenly feeling an unaccountable distaste for her
brother's society, she went thoughtfully into the house.

In the hall she encountered Faxon, in search of her. He had to make the
10.46, and had none too much time to get to the station.

"Joris will take you down," she said mechanically, when he had
explained.

"He's taken Alder and some of the others up to the golf club."

"And Picard?"

"He's off somewhere, too."

"How stupid. Well, I'll take you down myself. Let's see. Oh, we can make
it easily. It's only a quarter past now. I'll have the electric around
in a moment."

While she waited for the car to be brought around, she found herself
responding perfunctorily to Mr. Faxon's running comment on all sorts of
things in general, conscious that for the first time he was rather
tiresome. She had never taken his attentions to herself seriously. She
knew that he had a certain interest in pretty Della Baker rather warmer
than was permissible in the case of a married woman, and she shut her
eyes to the fact that her house gave them opportunities to meet that
they would not otherwise have had. Yet she believed there was no real
harm in Della, and as for Faxon,--well, he had flirted with so many
women in his time that she could not take him altogether seriously
either with herself or with others. And he usually succeeded in being
amusing. But to-day she had no desire to be amused. She was thinking
earnestly for perhaps the first time in her life ... wondering what she
really did think about things in general.

As she seated herself in the car and Faxon climbed in beside her,
she grew more silent, and her thoughts strayed very far away from
Braeburn. In spite of a very considerable reluctance on her part,
they persisted in wandering to an ugly little collection of shanties,
piled helter-skelter in the midst of lowering hills, where men went
down into the earth and came up--something less than men--where
twenty-two ... over and over again that wretched phrase persisted in
repeating itself, until she wanted to scream. Why had she ever allowed
that disagreeable stranger to spoil her day?

Suddenly, as if to punctuate her thoughts, she caught sight of a
familiar figure marching jerkily along the dusty road in f