Cornelia his respects, and apologize for
his going away without waiting to see her again. He had really expected
to stay over till Monday, but he found he could save several days by
taking the Chicago Limited that morning. Mrs. Montgomery praised his
energy; she did not believe he would be on the road a great while
longer; he would be in the firm in less than another year. She hinted
at his past unhappiness in the married state, and she said she did hope
that he would get somebody who would appreciate him, next time. There
did not seem to be any doubt in her mind that there would be a next
time with him.

Cornelia wanted to ask whether she expected him back soon; she could
not; but she resolved that whenever he came he should not find her in
that house. She thought where she should go, and what excuse she should
make for going, what she should tell Charmian, or Mr. Ludlow, if she
ever saw him again. It seemed to her that she had better go home, but
Cornelia hated to give up; she could not bear to be driven away. She
went to church, to escape herself, and a turmoil of things alien to the
place and the hour whirled through her mind during the service; she
came out spent with a thousand-fold dramatization of her relations to
Mr. Dickerson and to Mr. Ludlow. She sat down on a bench in the little
park before the church, and tried to think what she ought to do, while
the children ran up and down the walks, and the people from the
neighboring East Side avenues, in their poor Sunday best, swarmed in
the square for the mild sun and air of the late October. The street
cars dinned ceaselessly up and down, and back and forth; the trains of
the Elevated hurtled by on the west and on the east; the troubled city
roared all round with the anguish of the perpetual coming and going;
but it was as much Sunday there as it would have been on the back
street in Pymantoning where her mother's little house stood. The leaves
that dripped down at her feet in the light warm breaths of wind passing
over the square might have fallen from the maple before the gate at
home. The awful unity of life for the first time appeared to her. Was
it true that you could not get away from what you had been? Was that
the meaning of that little wretch's coming back to claim her after he
had forfeited every shadow of right to her that even her mother's
ignorance and folly had given him? Then it meant that he would come
back again and again, and never stop coming.