spoiled it all? Why had he not let things be? She was aroused from her
reverie by the sound of his desolate voice.

"Truly, it is the last day. Tears ... and then ice." He paused. "It will
rain presently, I think--with snow," he added quite calmly.

Almost as he spoke the rain began. They parted hurriedly. There was a
quick hand-shake, a murmured word, and she was fleeing from him with the
print of his lips still hot on her fingers.

It was an utterly wretched woman who sat staring for hours afterward at
the blank wall before her. And it was a hopeless, beaten man who trudged
through the dripping trees toward the station. Fate had had its pleasure
with both. Tired of the sport, it had crushed them like eggshells.

CHAPTER XII

ONLY A WOMAN

The next day Judith returned to the city. Winter had arrived in earnest
and there were other reasons why Braeburn had become impossible. She
drove to the station in a storm of blinding sleet, while the wind,
howling through trees suddenly become gaunt, seemed to shriek and gibber
with derision at her going.

But the city house had its memories, too. Recollections clustered
everywhere, mocking her. She made up her mind impulsively that she would
go to Florida. It was out of season of course, but it would be the more
restful for that. She felt very tired. She even consulted time tables.

But one afternoon, when she was in her motor, she saw Imrie. She
followed him with her eyes until he disappeared. She had not seen him
for months, though she knew in a vague sort of way, what he was doing.
He was perfectly justified, of course, in neglecting her. She had surely
done nothing to encourage his attentions. In fact she had done not a
little to discourage them completely. Nevertheless his indifference
piqued her. She decided not to go to Florida,--at least not until
January.

The real reason for the postponement, she managed to convince herself,
was her talk with Mrs. Dodson.

It occurred at a little dinner party given by Mrs. Weidely, a lady of
the most unimpeachable conventionality, who satisfied an unsuspected
craving of her nature by gathering about her the most thoroughly
unconventional people she could find. Had her husband, now deceased, not
been the upright president of a very large bank, and were her house not,
in consequence, situated in a location of indisputable respectability,
these dynamic assemblies would have been held with the attentive
co-operation of