n the
right kind of fuel to feed it. Kate was worthless, but his own self was
alive, and please God he would yet see better days. He would go home at
once to the child wife who needed him, and whom now he might love as she
should be loved. The thought became wondrously sweet to him as he rapidly
threw the things into his travelling bag and went about arrangements for
his trip home. He determined that if he ever came to New York again Marcia
should come with him.

CHAPTER XXV

Marcia hurried down to her own house early one morning. The phantoms of
her experiences in the old Green Tavern were pursuing her.

Once there she could do nothing but go over and over the dreadful things
that Harry Temple had said. In vain did she try to work. She went into the
library and took up a book, but her mind would wander to David.

She sat down at the piano and played a few tender chords and sang an old
Italian song which somebody had left at their house several years before:

"Dearest, believe,
When e'er we part:
Lonely I grieve,
In my sad heart:--"

With a sob her head dropped upon her hands in one sad little crash of
wailing tones, while the sound died away in reverberation after
reverberation of the strings till Marcia felt as if a sea of sound were
about her in soft ebbing, flowing waves.

The sound covered the lifting of the side door latch and the quiet step of
a foot. Marcia was absorbed in her own thoughts. Her smothered sobs were
mingling with the dying sounds of the music, still audible to her fine
ear.

David had come by instinct to his own home first. He felt that Marcia
would be there, and now that he was come and the morning sun flooded
everything and made home look so good he felt that he must find her first
of all before his relationship with home had been re-established. He
passed through kitchen, dining room and hall, and by the closed parlor
door. He never thought of her being in there with the door closed. He
glanced into the library and saw the book lying in his chair as she had
left it, and it gave a touch of her presence which pleased him. He went
softly toward the stairs thinking to find her. He had stopped at a shop
the last thing and bought a beautiful creamy shawl of China crepe heavily
embroidered, and finished with long silken fringe. He had taken it from
his carpet-bag and was carrying i